


The Elementary Cases

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [34]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Biggles Series - W. E. Johns, Game of Thrones (TV), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural
Genre: 20th Century, 221B Baker Street, Airplanes, Alibis, Assassination, Bees, Betrayal, Bigotry & Prejudice, Blackmail, Cars, Coffee, Deception, Edwardian Period, Embarrassment, Emotions, England (Country), Espionage, F/M, Family, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Gay Sex, Government Conspiracy, Homophobia, Illnesses, Infidelity, Inheritance, Jealousy, Johnlock - Freeform, Jumpers, London, M/M, Marriage, Middlesex, Minor Character Death, Multi, Native American Character(s), Nobility, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Olympics, Politics, Pranks and Practical Jokes, RMS Titanic, Retirement, Rugby, Russia, Sabotage, Shock, Sussex, Theatre, Threats, Threesome - M/M/M, Trains, Women's Suffrage, floods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 44,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27994770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1904-1914. Ah, the peace and quiet of life on the downs (retired doctors screaming during sexual encounters apart, of course). As foretold by Mr. Sherrinford Holmes there are seven more cases in their first decade of quiet country living, and family is a dominant theme of several until the last – which ends in John being both mortified and seeing someone he knows aiming to kill the King of England!
Relationships: Bronn/Arthur Dayne/Jaime Lannister, Inspector Macdonald/OMC, Lucifer/OMC, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Kudos: 10





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ourinfinities](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourinfinities/gifts), [Weaseleer_Bones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaseleer_Bones/gifts).



** 1904 **

**Interlude: Field-Marshall**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_General Sherlock earns that last promotion!_

**Interlude: The Next Generation**  
by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire  
_Lucifer thinks he is out of the woods – but he is so wrong!_

**Interlude: Settling In**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The remainder of the duo's first year in the cottage_

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** 1905 **

**Interlude: Reassignment**  
by Mr. Brencis Bassett-Evans, Esquire  
_There are bees, political crises, and smirking postmen_

**Interlude: Trials And Tribulations**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_There are bees, political crises, and smirking postmen_

**Interlude: Cadbury's, Concerts And Collapses**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_There is chocolate, a picnic and a death in the family_

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** 1906 **

**Interlude: The 'D'**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Sherlock gets a terrible shock!_

**Interlude: Belvederes And Battleships**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Past predictions come true and there is sex several dozen feet up_

**Interlude: Donations And Delays**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John is both embarrassed and concerned – rightly so in the latter instance_

**Case 360: The Adventure Of The Bogus Laundry**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_When WILL John learn?_

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** 1907 **

**Interlude: Candyman**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The advance of technology continues to surprise John_

**Case 361: The Adventure Of The Lion's Mane**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John's son Ivan needs help – yet he cannot tell him the truth_

**Interlude: Holy Cow And Holidays**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_There is a departure from Chuffingden, and some Festive Panties_

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** 1908 **

**Interlude: Treachery And Toblerone**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Two women know to the duo both die, but with very different results_

**Interlude: Lady In Red**  
by Lady Aelfrida Holmes  
_Randall Holmes is trapped!_

**Interlude: Gladiators And Greengages**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_With strategically-placed towels and the misuse of vegetables_

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** 1909 **

**Case 362: How Watson Learned The Trick ☼**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John learns the truth about Sherlock's past – and so does he!_

**Interlude: TNG**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Emotional Overload Alert!_

**Interlude: Polar Opposites**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_There are firsts for Mankind as well as more political shenanigans_

**Interlude: Wings And Things**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John is afraid of heights but he has Sherlock to ease his worries_

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** 1910 **

**Interlude: Crapper, Crippin And Cornishmen**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock has a really bad idea about visitors to the cottage_

**Interlude: Come The Fall**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John actually manages to say no to Sherlock!_

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** 1911 **

**Interlude: Wedding Bells**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The duo both have weddings to go to – unfortunately, in both cases_

**Interlude: Coronations And Cuckoldry**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_King George The Fifth gets crowned while John gets... yes_

**Interlude: Temporary Amnesia**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock 'forgets' his keys and there are marriage problems_

**Case 363: The Adventure Of The Airborne Assassin ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Young James Bigglesworth seems just a keen tyro – but is he?_

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** 1912 **

**Interlude: Upgrade**  
by Mr. Fairdale Hobbs, Esquire  
_A gentleman's journey to America has an unexpected delay_

**Interlude: SOS**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A ship sinks....._

**Interlude: Generations**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Sherlock and John view their next generations rather differently_

**Interlude: Kenal**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_John discovers that yes, life can be even more annoying!_

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** 1913 **

**Case 364: The Brierdene Mystery ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Words are critical as Sherlock solves a mystery for some friends_

**Interlude: Beaumont, Bullnoses And By-Bys**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Godsons, new cars – and Sherlock and John say a fond farewell_

**Interlude: Painting And Pillar-Boxes**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_A lady's day out ends badly, and Sherlock makes a purchase_

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** 1914 **

**Interlude: Descent**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_The road to war_

**Case 365: The Adventure Of Prince Charming**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Sherlock's relatives really do keep it in the family!_

**Case 366: His Last Bow**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Sherlock aims to kill – and John wishes someone dead!_

**Interlude: Old And New**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_To get to the future one has to relinquish the past_

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	2. Interlude: Field-Marshal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1904\. The peaceful and quiet sunset of the dynamic duo's lives on the Downs begins (note: description does not include any doctors with the initials J.H.W. screaming for either mercy or no mercy).

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It would have been quite shameful of me to feel proud at the wrecked form of my lover limping down the stairs, looking like he had just gone through three consecutive rugby matches (and lost every one). General Sherlock had most definitely made Field-Marshal – three times!

 _“Must_ you smirk quite so loud?” John muttered limping across to the fireside chair, the one piece of furniture that we had had brought from Baker Street. “And ye Gods, that thing you did with the feather last night? It nearly killed me!”

“I learned that from Mr. West, Mr. Galahad LeStrade's friend”, I teased, enjoying the fact that even John's scowling evidently took a lot of effort. “With what he gets to deal with on a nightly basis, he has to call on all his Latin inventiveness.”

“Damn perverted Eye-ties!” he grumbled.

“Well, if you did not _enjoy_ it.....”

He was clearly torn, wanting me to repeat what we had done but fearing that I might insist on it right now. If there was a Pout any time soon, I could not be held responsible for any naked consequences.

“Tonight”, I promised. “Besides it is Saturday, so that will give you something to seek forgiveness for when we go to church on Sunday morning.”

He groaned.

“Damn hard pews!” he moaned. 

I did not snigger.

John scowled at me. Apparently I did snigger. Oh dear, and now he was pouting. Not a wise decision, all things considered.

“Have mercy!” he begged.

“You like it better when I choose not to have mercy!” I grinned. “Back to our room, beloved.”

He trudged away looking like a condemned man. Which in a way he was.

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	3. Interlude: The Next Generation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1904\. Just when you thought that it was safe......

_[Narration by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire]_

I clung to Benji's muscular body, thankful that his strong arms held me in place as I was impaled on the Banjax. Seriously, this was my life?

Last year the dog had had his twentieth – _twentieth!_ – and last child, young Stafford, after which his wife had made clear that she considered his lineage to have been sufficiently well-established. So that had been an eighteenth time (two sets of twins, on each of which occasion he had been four times as damn horny!) when he he had come round to work off his post-christening angst, and had reduced me to a happy pile of goo. I could still of course meet him at the door wearing the Panama hat which let him know I was his however he wanted it, but I had sort of been a bit regretful. On the other hand I had been fifty-five while he, damnably unfairly, had only just turned forty. We were neither of us getting any younger.

I thought that with what little was left of my mind as he thrust into me, tears running down his handsome face.

“He was so beautiful!” he sobbed. “My wonderful little Lukie!”

His eldest son and namesake had married last year – just before Stafford's christening which was why I had been in even poorer shape than usual after a double dose of angst on my lover's part – and now they had had their first-born son who, to my great happiness, had been another Luke (it was also the name of the younger Benji's wife's brother, as well as that of my godson out of trap sixteen). Then Bet, who apparently was now trying to kill me, had sent her husband round to me where I had faced the horrible realization that he had twenty children so if they ended up each providing him with twenty grandsons....

I just hoped that they buried me decently when my time came!

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	4. Interlude: Settling In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1904\. The first year in Sussex, and despite the world continuing to get itself into assorted messes, Sherlock and John enjoy their retirement in peace.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

As I have said many times before I would not have been Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired) had I not had strong doubts as to whether Sherlock would truly be able to stay with me to our little cottage in the country. I fully expected some major drama to drag him back to London within weeks if not days and although I tried not to express these fears he must surely have known because he knew me so well. There may or may not have been rather more manly embracing than usual in our first few weeks in our new home but there was definitely none of that thing that started with the third letter of the alphabet and rhymed with huddling.

_How could I hear the smug bastard smirking down in the damn village?_

Typically we had a scare almost within a month of our arrival to our own private heaven. As part of the Russo-Japanese War that October saw a Russian fleet, presumably overdosed on vodka, managed to mistake a fleet of British trawlers for the Japanese Navy (because we all know the latter are in and around the North Sea every five minutes!). The Russians duly fired on them _and_ each other, sinking one trawler. The Royal Navy was scrambled to pursue and the Czar very quickly agreed to set the matter before an independent international tribunal. Sherlock did receive several frantic telegrams from his brother Randall over the matter although fortunately the lounge-lizard did not appear at our door as the man-traps had not yet arrived.

There is a lot of nonsense written about Victorians today, and even though we were now technically Edwardians the country had not changed much. Looking back from beyond the Great War (and before what looks like being a second such nightmare 'courtesy' of the vile Herr Hitler) many people today think that we were far too prudish, always sour-faced and prone to moralizing. It is true that society had a higher moral code in those days – and was all the better for it, in my humble opinion – but people were a lot more tolerant that some modern writers like to claim. I have no doubt that the villagers among whom we now lived very quickly came to know exactly what sort of relationship we had, yet there were no cross words or raised eyebrows. Truly most people really did not mind what other people did, provided they did it quietly and did not talk about it. The modern habit for openly flaunting one's private life is I feel quite vulgar.

Sherlock just came in and has made an improper suggestion about flaunting one's privates, which quite made me lose my train of thought. Now he is giving me another look. I – or whatever is left of me – shall have to resume my writings later, assuming that I can still hold a pen. For what I am about to receive....

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One of the things that Sherlock wanted most now that we had a place of our own was to have a 'proper' garden (the sole disappointment of the cottage was that the tenants had obviously bothered little with either the front or back gardens of the place which had become completely overgrown). Of course it was already autumn when we moved in but apparently one could do a lot of preparation work for the next spring, and we both enjoyed preparing the ground for what he had planned. There were some disagreements over what went were but we were manly men and had a sensible way of resolving such things.

All right, I always lost. But I did not mind losing _those_ arguments! Especially when he fucked me afterwards while wearing his 'Bee Prepared!' sweater – and only the sweater!

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We had to leave the cottage briefly that November as we had had a call for help from an old friend of ours. Inspector Macdonald's ten-year-old grandson Fraser was taken seriously ill, and he and his lover Chatton Smith sent urgently asking for my help as their current local doctor seemed to have pretty much given up on the boy. It turned out to be an extremely rare form of winter flu (in autumn!) and thankfully I was able to cure him. Sherlock did so much good in the world even in his retirement; I enjoyed being able to contribute my bit.

Mr. Macdonald telling his younger lover that he was taking him home so he could 'contribute his bit' though – really! Some men are complete sex maniacs these days. (Sherlock looked at me rather oddly when I said that to him; I have no idea why).

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Our first Christmas in the cottage was memorable as I possibly went a little overboard in my decorating (all right I went mad!). Although I was sure that neither Mrs. Malone nor Mrs. Rockland would have cared just how many decorations we had put up in our rooms there had always been a slight restraint knowing that at the end of the day 221B was someone else's house, no matter how much it felt like ours. Now I was free to decorate everything and anything, and I duly did. The vicar, round for a visit one day, remarked that it looked like Christmas had exploded inside the place, but Sherlock loved it and I shall always cherish the memory of my love wearing the Santa hat with the little bell on it. 

No, not on his head. It was most definitely jingle all the way, and so much fun to ride out the old year with a bang!

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	5. Interlude: Reassignment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1905\. It is said that no Heaven on Earth is perfect – but arrangements can be made to make it closer.

_[Narration by Mr. Brencis Bassett-Evans, Esquire]_

I was actually happy.

I've never been one of those insufferably cheery fellows like Jay (Forthright) and with a face like mine that was understandable, but six month after Mr. Sherlock Holmes had sorted matters over Ned and four after the horny little bastard had moved in next door, I realized I was really liking my life. Even if I limped to work alongside some smirking horny little bastard every morning who insisted on a thorough wake-up call that ran from the bedroom via the bathroom to the kitchen. 

But they say no Heaven (except the real one) is perfect, and there was one black cloud looming over us. Our two cottages were at the end of a row of six, and although three of the other sets of occupants got on well with us, the fourth, a sneering fogman called Geoff Bowen who always scowled whenever he saw us. And when Ted (the Belford stationmaster) pulled us over one day to tell us that Bowen had been making what he called 'hinsinuations' about us, I was worried.

Luckily Ned immediately sent a telegram to Mr. Holmes – that surprised me as I knew he'd retired with Doctor Watson and I was sure I'd read somewhere that they'd gone Abroad – but sure enough, a few days later three men who were even bigger than me called at Bowen's cottage. I couldn't catch what they said but he put in for and was immediately given a transfer down to Newcastle, and the village was better off for his going.

Most of the village. Ned damn well decided to 'celebrate; with a whole load of stuff he'd somehow got hold of from some place in London, thankfully at the start of a weekend we both had off. Which was good – as even by Monday I was barely able to walk!

Hot damn, my man was good!

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	6. Interlude: Trials And Tribulations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1905\. Sherlock finally gets his bees, John catches up with his writings, a lot of things needs testing, and a postman is suddenly very busy.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

During our first full year in the cottage I completed writing up all our remaining cases, and supplied them in a steady stream to both the 'Strand' magazine and my publishers. Neither of them knew our address; all our correspondence went through Mrs. Rockland in Baker Street and it was through her that I received a weekly delivery of what Sherlock laughingly called 'fan mail'. I bore in mind that 'fan' was an abbreviation of fanatic as some of the people who wrote to me.... well, even after all the different varieties of sex that I had experienced with Sherlock I was still shocked! 

All right, I was grateful for some of the suggestions, even the ones that turned out to be physically impossible (we had fun proving that!). An especial note of thanks must go at this point to the mysterious 'Mister Lyster', writing all the way from the United States of America whose set of works 'The Highly Elastic Adventures of Shylock Hulme and Johann Whitsun' were more than instructive. It took us weeks to work through them all, and Bob our postman chuckled darkly at the sudden rise in boxes and parcels delivered to the cottage as well as at my more than usually dishevelled state around those times. I would have glared at the bastard, but moving all those facial muscles took a lot of effort. 

As did opening and closing the damn door!

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The summer of 1905 saw the Moroccan (or Tangiers) Crisis, the first of three scares that could have precipitated a global conflict when the German Kaiser made an attempt to split the now official _Entente Cordiale_ between Great Britain and France by attempting to prise Morocco away from the latter. I was not alone in having my doubts on the matter although the British government stood by their new allies and the Germans backed down – this time. But it was to be the first of four such crises, the last of which would finally precipitate the Great War.

 _(I should explain to the 1930s reader that the reason that this arrangement between Great Britain and France was an_ entente _instead of just a regular alliance was that it was a defensive arrangement and nothing else. Either country could start an offensive war but the arrangement would not entitle them to expect anything from their partner, unlike the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy)._

On a happier note, that summer also saw Sherlock get his beloved bees. Only a small hive but it made him happy, and that was what was important. As I said, I would have put up with pet elephants in the backyard if he had wanted them; I could refuse my man nothing. And nothing was pretty much what I had left afterwards. We really should have named the place 'Bee-Gone, Manliness'!

I really should not even have thought that, as the mind-reading bastard is now looking way too thoughtful. Damnation!

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	7. Interlude: Cadbury's, Concerts And Collapses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1905\. There is a delicious new type of chocolate bar for John to enjoy, a trip to London that looks to the future rather than the past, and a six-course meal that proves one course too many for someone eminently unmissable.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

In October a chance arose to travel to London to hear a Trafalgar Day concert which would feature a new piece by Mr. Henry Wood. I was initially reluctant to go mostly because I feared any disruption to my happy existence but Sherlock eventually 'persuaded' me (use your imagination!). We could have easily travelled on to Baker Street to see the Rocklands afterwards but we instead arranged to meet them at my favourite Trafalgar Street restaurant. I was doubly glad at that; 221B belonged to the past and I wanted to remember it fondly while walking boldly into my future with the man I loved. 

Although after our night at the hotel in London walking was something I could only do with difficulty. And I was sure that the capital's roads were even bumpier than I remembered!

This was also the year that the militant suffragette movement began to make its presence felt and as I had predicted the public reaction was hostile (I just _know_ that a certain blue-eyed genius is muttering something about wiseacres as I write this!). Votes for women would come just as the last century had brought three great acts that had led to about sixty per cent of men (mainly those with property, including myself at last) having a vote, but this sort of direct action served only to antagonize people and press criticism was particularly fierce. The suffragette movement did however claim one early casualty; the disgraced Mr. Torver Holmes followed up a major speech at an anti-suffragette rally with a six-course meal and promptly dropped dead of a heart-attack! 

Perhaps I was wrong to say that the suffragettes were _all_ bad – and damnation if he is not shaking his head at me again!

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Chuffingden is not that far from Lewes as the crow flies, to which small town the railway that serves Berwick runs before continuing on to Brighton or London. Although we loved the cottage dearly there were times when we wished to be away from it for a while, and one of our favourite places to go was the fields to the north of Lewes, where Simon de Montfort had won the great victory that had secured an English parliament.

“Of course we did have a form of that institution before the earl came along”, said Mr. Smuggity-Smugness. 

“It is strange”, I said, ignoring the show-off in the vicinity, “that it took two really bad kings like John and his son Henry the Third to advance the English constitution. But then I suppose that poor Earl Simon would turn in his grave if he saw our modern system, especially when women do finally get the vote.”

The village store in Chuffingden had started stocking a new type of chocolate bar called Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and I had brought some along today which I now set about breaking apart into chunks. I had tried some in the shop and it had been quite pleasant, although a certain person not so far away just now was quite wrong to claim that I had cooed with pleasure over it. It had been a cough, that was all.

“My unpleasant brother Mycroft is, like the late and unlamented Torver, bitterly against that idea”, Sherlock said with a smile. “He thinks that the franchise is far too wide already, although I assume that he has not yet voiced those opinions in our parents' house.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. It was wonderfully peaceful up here, the quiet barely disturbed by the faint sound of church bells and a train chuffing along one of the two lines that ran to London. It may have been November but it was still pleasantly warm, and I was feeling happy with life just now.

“Because he had not yet appeared in the obituary pages!” Sherlock grinned. “Mother has decided that she is in favour of women having the vote, which of course means that Father will be too. Shall we start our picnic?”

My love had purchased an honest-to-goodness picnic set, complete with a gingham blanket that we were resting on. He had however insisted on buying as much food as possible from the village.

“Very peaceful up here”, I sighed.

“That is good”, he said. “Hopefully the good citizens of Lewes will not hear your screams when I fuck you on this blanket.”

He really was incorrigible! Praise the Lord!

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	8. Interlude: The 'D'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1906\. Sherlock is horrified – what on earth is John trying to do to him?

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I reeled in horror at the ghastly taste that was filling my mouth and spluttered a mouthful of whatever the hell it was across the table, although fortunately not at John himself. My love looked up in astonishment as I bolted for our kitchen and a glass of water to rid myself of the foul poison that I had just imbibed.

“Sherlock?” he asked, clearly confused. “What is wrong?”

I frantically downed more and more water until the vile taste was finally gone. Even then the memory of it was awful!

“What the blazes was _that?”_ I gasped, looking at my mug in betrayal.

“Oh that”, he said. “They had got some of that new decaffeinated coffee in the village shop, so I thought that we might try some.”

I stared at him. He was not making any sense at all.

“ _Decaffeinated_ coffee?” I asked. “What is that?”

“Coffee with the caffeine taken out”, he said calmly. “A new process; they found it quite by chance. Did you not like it?”

Had my love been exchanged for an alien while I had been distracted or something? _Coffee without caffeine?_ What strange language was he was talking?

“I _hate_ it!” I said firmly. “It was like drinking bilge-water!”

He shrugged and went back to his newspaper. I growled angrily, and he looked over at me in surprise.

“Bedroom!” I barked. “Now!”

The snarky bastard actually _saluted!_

“Sir, yes sir!” he said, before throwing aside his newspaper. Right, he needed a long, hard lesson never to bring that sort of filth into our home ever again!

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He got it! Four times!

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	9. Interlude: Belvederes And Battleships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1906\. John's writings finally catch up with the stories fit to be published, and the dynamic duo take a trip that will take in another beach-hut and a room with a view (sex in both, as if you have to ask!). Plus there is more fun with costumes and a long-promised battleship.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

Two years into our time at the cottage and mercifully the public seemed to have accepted his retirement which had been announced at the end of our adventure in Oxfordshire (The Adventure of the Creeping Man) published that May. One magazine lamented the loss of 'that great Hercules' which bearing in mind that particular legendary character's somewhat chequered career I found an odd comparison. True, Sherlock had rid the world of pests like the Greek hero had done but without the acts of brutality and slaying of his own family (although having said that, with Sherlock's family.....). Then again even if my man did not look like the archetypal strongman that appearance had been the undoing of more than one criminal who had underestimated him as a result. And as I have said before, he was more than Herculean in, ahem, some areas.

Oh come on! Do I have to do _all_ the work here?

The first few months of that year saw two events of interest, the first of which was the one foretold by those knowing ladies whom we had met a few years back on the Isle of Wight (and who still sent Sherlock various knitwear, some of which.... seriously, 'Bee Outstanding!'?). The famous 'H.M.S. Dreadnought' was launched and duly revolutionized naval warfare, but the inevitable result was an arms race as other nations scrambled to catch up; as the ladies had also foretold the most powerful ship in the world would end up barely lasting a decade. The other event was the first international rugby match in which England beat France, which I only mention because I told Sherlock about it one day, he dug out that rugby kit from Bamburgh and....... and I could not make it to church the following Sunday. Talk about a scrum-down!

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That summer we were due to visit the Malones in Eastbourne. We had intended to travel by train from Berwick but a few days before we were to set out there occurred the terrible and inexplicable Salisbury railway accident when some twenty-eight people lost their lives as an express train tried to take a sharp curve at far too high a speed. Sherlock of course knew immediately of my concerns and instead suggested hiring a trap in the village and going by road. It was considerably slower but I enjoyed the journey, especially as we went via the coast and passed a beautiful old tower complete with a belvedere†. 

Well, we did not exactly _pass_ it. I reminded Sherlock of the first time that I had taken him outside the light-house on Futility Island, and since this place was so isolated we decided to re-enact that memorable and happy scene (my love's lock-picking skills were as good as ever, thankfully). We had a good time in Eastbourne (even if we got knowing looks from our former landlady and her husband on our arrival; they knew us well!), and took the same route back. With the same stop. 

Memories, you know.

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_Notes:_   
_† An architectural feature, very rare these days. Think a light-house's light-room with the light removed, a sort of summer-house positioned at the top of a building._

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	10. Interlude: Donations And Delays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1906\. An untimely clerical visit leads to embarrassment for John if not Sherlock, and the doctor suffers what seems for now to be a minor disappointment.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

If it really possible to die of sheer mortification, this would surely be it! The Reverend Peters smiled benignly at me.

“I did call at your cottage yesterday”, he said in a tone of mild reproof. “Unfortunately that must have been you were busy.”

Some snarky bastard did not help by openly smirking from behind the vicar's back, damn him!

“Yes”, I said. “Busy.”

“I could have sworn that I heard something that sounded like someone crying from inside the place”, the vicar went on, looking pointedly at me. “But I must have been mistaken.”

“That must have been when we were fitting the new mirror in the bedroom”, Sherlock said unhelpfully. “It was quite difficult to... get it up, so we cannot have heard you.”

I could not even glare at the bastard. Yes, we had been in the bedroom, and we had been testing the new mirror by my fucking him long and hard in front of it while looking at our reflections. And he had had no problem getting it up, as my poor abused backside could attest. Lord alone knows how much extra time in Purgatory the vicar's untimely visit had earned us!

We would be making an extra large donation to the plate this Sunday!

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Throughout that year there was one date that loomed particularly large in my mind, namely September the twenty-third. My son Ivan's birthday, and this year would be his twenty-first when his mother had promised to reveal his true parentage to him whatever her husband said. I had been both dreading and looking forward to it, although of course a large part of me was wondering just what was going to go wrong this time to wreck everything.

Yes, that was cynical of me – and as it turned out, absolutely correct as per usual. At the end of August Mrs. Leeds wrote to tell me that his grandfather the colonel had fallen gravely ill and as the outlook was seemingly terminal she asked to wait until he had passed. She did reiterate her promise that she would tell Ivan the truth, and although I did not like the delay I had had little choice but to accept it. Although I still feared the worst.

Once again, I would be proven right.

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	11. Case 360: The Adventure Of The Bogus Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1906\. A minor misadventure in which a retired doctor makes the mistake of lying to his mind-reader of a lover. The Consequences are... painful!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

I, John Hamish Watson, still maintain that this was not a real case and that some blue-eyed genius was being a mean meanie from Meanieville in making me include it in the Sherlock canon. But he 'persuaded' me – oh boy did he 'persuade' me! – and once I was able to hold a pen again I had to write it up.

_With him sat naked across the room from me the whole. Damn. Time!_

It was the last day of September, barely a week after our return from Eastbourne, when Sherlock received an invitation to a wedding. Normally he would not even have considered going especially as the thing was to take place on Lismore, one of the Hebridean islands in Argyllshire, but without going into details he was not only acquainted with the groom but that gentleman's father had greatly assisted him in one of our cases during the Moriarty years and was now seriously ill. My beloved still offered to decline as of course the invitation was solely for him, but I knew from listening to my patients (I treated people in the village and surrounding area as the nearest doctors were in either Lewes or Eastbourne) as to how easily bitter feuds could be started if Person A’s spouse was invited when Person B’s was not, yet by giving way to everybody the hapless bride and groom might well end up with some five hundred people coming to their great day! Although it would be a sacrifice, I would have to bite the bullet and let my friend go alone.

Sherlock left on a Thursday afternoon, October the twenty-fifth, to go to London for the night sleeper to Glasgow; I remember that the weather was grey and gloomy, not unlike my mood. The wedding itself was on Saturday morning so he would not be back until the middle of Sunday at the earliest, more likely Monday. It was barely half a week and I was glad that he was going as he had looked so happy when I had given him my blessing, but I had underestimated how utterly lonely I would feel. In between some manly sniffing I ended up taking one of his dirty shirts out of the laundry-basket and sleeping with it, so that at least I had his scent with me until he returned. I little knew how soon that small act would come back to bite me with a vengeance.

I was also, rather foolishly, worried about Sherlock being on a train. I knew that he would not go through Grantham (scene of the second of three inexplicable rail crashes around that unfortunate time), his route being out of Euston rather than King's Cross but I could not shake the fear that something would happen while we were apart. I scanned the papers anxiously the next day for any news of such a calamity and I loved him even more for sending me telegrams first from Glasgow and then from Oban to say that he was tired and footsore (and un-caffeinated, God help those around him!) but that he had made the ferry to Lismore. 

My love also kept me updated regularly thereafter although the news was mixed; the time of the wedding and reception meant that he could not make the afternoon ferry back to the mainland but the hotel owner in Achnacroish had put him in contact with a local fisherman who could take him over to Connel (on the line into Oban and slightly nearer to the island) on Sunday morning from where he could get a train connecting with the night sleeper to London. Further telegrams on his way back from Glasgow and London only heightened my expectations and the welcome-home sex was amazing for two men in their fifties! 

I do not remember much of that November, except that the fireworks definitely did not end on Guy Fawkes's Night!

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One day in early December I was busy decorating the cottage (and avoiding my lover's smirk at my wincing every time I stretched!) when we had an unexpected visitor. It was General Carlyon Holmes.

“Granny Rose is failing”, he told Sherlock. 

Sherlock looked sad but clearly did not see what was expected of him. His brother sighed.

“Father wants to gather the family one last time for her”, he said. “No significant others, just blood.”

Sherlock looked at him sharply.

“Carl”, he said warningly, “if I go and then find what you have just said is untrue, you know that I will come straight back without seeing her. I mean it!”

That was no idle threat. Last year there had been a horrendous family affair arranged by Lady Holmes to which I had been quite glad not to have been invited – until a grumpy Sherlock had gone there and discovered that his eldest brother Mycroft had been in charge of the invitations and had 'forgotten' to post mine. My beloved had arrived at the family home to find everyone else’s spouse or partner was in attendance. He had immediately turned round and had come straight home despite his family’s efforts to get him to change his mind. I knew also that he had not spoken to his eldest brother since, although as I have said previously there was little love lost between them especially after Sherlock's involvement in the latter's divorce. Mycroft Holmes only kept his disapproval of our relationship under wraps because as Sherlock wryly put it, 'the arm of the law is long, but the arm of Mother is longer'.

“You can trust me, Sherlock”, his brother said coaxingly. “I am having to leave Danny behind. I know how difficult it is.”

The old soldier and his lover Mr. Daniel Hunter had moved recently to Godwinsford, the village near to Dibley where Mr. Hunter's friend Mr. De Klerk (whom we had helped out in the Sussex Vampire case) lived. The latter had married his lady since our encounter with him and now had a son named after him, which happy event had been followed by an even happier one when the harridan Mrs. Mabel Willenden had left the village for a retirement cottage somewhere. Hopefully in Outer Mongolia!

“How long for?” Sherlock asked, nodding at me for some reason before looking suspiciously at his brother.

“Not more than a few days”, his brother said firmly. “The old battle-axe wants a visit, not for us to stand around waiting for her to peg out!”

I smiled at that. ‘Granny Rose’ was Lady Holmes's formidable aunt; her first name was Elaine but she was usually known by her middle name. I had never met her for which I was somewhat thankful as Sherlock had described as 'even worse than my mother, although nothing like as dangerous with a pen', but I knew that she had a habit of lashing out with her walking-stick at anything or anyone that displeased her, family included. On the plus side he had also said that she was obscenely rich and was stringing his brother Mycroft along as he hoped to inherit her money.

Sherlock turned to me.

“I promise that I will only be gone for a few days”, he said firmly. “You will be all right?”

“Of course”, I said with a smile. “I survived your Scottish trip and this is much closer. You should go and pack. I will fine.”

He smiled back at me, and went upstairs. His brother was looking at me and I had the uneasy feeling that he could see through me far too easily.

The general drove my love to Berwick Station from which they would take the train to London. I waved them goodbye then went slowly back into the house. Only then did I break down in tears. Lord, I was a wreck! Sherlock would be ashamed of me if he had known but a long lonely time without the light of my life stretched ahead of me and I did not know how on earth I was going to get through it.

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Somehow I got through it, although when the general's carriage dropped Sherlock off at the door and he declined to come inside, I silently blessed the fellow. I was in the main room when Sherlock burst through the door and within seconds I had a blue-eyed genius all over me, panting as if he had run a race.

“That was so horrible!” he declared. “I do not care what friend or family member calls next time, I am _not_ going without you! That is a promise.”

I could tell from his scent how distressed he was, as doubtless he could tell from mine how miserable I was feeling. We quite literally clawed each other's clothes off in our eagerness, and how we got to the bedroom without sustaining a major injury I do not know. Of course Sherlock was undressed first and when I had finally managed to get myself out of a pair of trousers which seemed to have been glued to me, I looked up to see him naked on the bed, his legs drawn back and ready for me. I was fifty-four years old and I briefly wondered if I would live to see fifty-five when I saw that. Then he moaned in anticipation and my higher brain functions promptly hoisted the white flag.

Somehow I managed to retain enough sense to quickly open him up, my cock already leaking in anticipation at being inside him where it belonged. I tried to ease in gently but even at fifty-two he was as flexible as ever and he scooted down the bed, impaling himself on me and letting out a satisfied groan as I yelped in surprise. We usually took our time when coupling but this was raw sex and I was blinded with lust, racing towards my climax and coming far sooner than I would have wished. I came violently, yelping in agonized relief before falling onto my hands and trying not to crush him.

“John?” he grunted.

My vision returned, and I briefly wondered why he had not come as well. Then I realized that the sneaky little bastard was actually wearing the platinum cock-ring that I had bought for him and which he had had engraved that last time he had had to visit London (seriously, where on earth had he found a jeweller to do _that?_ ). Though still recovering I could see what he had in mind, and moved onto my front next to him. He quickly fingered me open and then entered me with the ring still on, groaning as he achieved his own relief. Like a dog to a bone he found my prostate at once and began to pummel it mercilessly with his cock, causing my eyes to roll back in my head. I let out a guttural snarl and he must have removed the ring because suddenly he was coming inside of me, hissing his joy as he painted my insides white. Incredibly for a man in his mid-fifties I promptly came a second time, my balls almost aching as they were drained but any pain was banished by the dead weight of a six-foot blue-eyed genius falling inelegantly on top of me and lying there, our two hearts beating as one.

All right, maybe I had missed him just a tiny little bit.....

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If I had thought the welcome-home sex after our first separation had been good, what followed in the next week was astounding. It was as if Sherlock had been denied sex for an entire decade, not just a few days, and was determined to make up for lost time. Usually at times like this he preferred to take the lead but this time he seemed determine to even things out, happy both when pounding me into the mattress or riding me into a semi-comatose state. I suppose we must have eaten and whatnot but all I can remember for that week was Sherlock wanting (and of course getting) sex every time he was awake. By the end of it I wondered if I might have to order a bath-chair as I could barely walk!

I made the mistake of mentioning this to Sherlock and realized a moment too late that he might take it as an invitation to stop. Perhaps that proved that I was finally beginning to go senile; he proceeded to walk me all around the cottage while holding me impaled on his cock! I broke yet another cock-ring (not the platinum one, thankfully); they really do not make things like they used to.

It was only as I lay there on the seventh day that something occurred to me. I turned carefully to the sex-maniac next to me and ran a finger through his thick stubble (shaving had been a low priority as of late for some reason).

“Mrs. Whitlow has not called”, I said kissing him tenderly on the forehead. He nestled closer to me and nibbled at my neck. 

“I dropped my washing in at her cottage when we passed on the way here”, he whispered back. “I also told her that we would not need her for at least a week and would let her know when to bring it back. Of course I paid her anyway.”

I frowned, then winced. Moving facial muscles _hurt!_.

“You planned this!” I said accusingly.

“Yes”, he said unashamedly, slowly grinding his crotch against mine. “Now I think I am ready for Round Thirty-One.”

I sighed, and decided to lie back and think of England while he had his way with me. There were worse fates.

Few better, though!

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In our many cases together it was often the small things that tripped a criminal up and allowed Sherlock to bring justice upon them. So it was with me in this instance, and I only realized my mistake the following Thursday when Mrs. Whitlow returned with all Sherlock's washing. The excellent woman did not even raise an eyebrow at the rather large load of both our clothes and bedding that she took away in its place.

All right, maybe one eyebrow. And her knowing look was uncomfortable if well-merited. I think that she just about suppressed what sounded like the start of a snigger. That cough sounded suspicious, though!

Sherlock was putting his clean clothes away when I came back from my walk later that day and I sat down to read my paper. After a while however I became aware that he was looking for something. I put the paper down.

“Have you lost something?” I asked.

“My 'Bee Loved!' jumper that you got me from the Isle of Wight”, he said, looking adorably frustrated. “I did not take it to London with me as I feared that it might somehow 'inspire' Mother to write something even worse, and I am sure that it was in the pile to be washed that I left behind. But it is not here with the washing.”

Mercifully he was searching the small cupboard in which we kept the dirty washing basket so he did not see my face turning bright red. I had made it through the week partly by taking that jumper and sleeping with it, the lingering scent of Sherlock keeping me going when I could not have the man himself. In my excitement at his return I had forgotten to add it to the rest of today's dirty laundry. It was still folded away neatly under our bed, doubtless full of my own scent as well as his. I might as well have placed a signed confession of my idiocy on top of it.

“You are sure that you did not miss it, or perhaps took it with you?” I asked trying to hold my voice steady. “Maybe it was unpacked in London and left there?”

“I shall have to wire Father and get him to check my room”, he said. “Those jumpers are wonderfully warm and I do not want to be without even one of them with winter coming.”

He went upstairs to search there and I let out a ragged breath. This was seriously embarrassing. Though I loved being scented by my man I still felt embarrassed at my having been reduced to holding my mate's dirty clothes at night to stop me from crying. I would have to take the damn jumper to be washed somewhere else and get it back without his noticing.

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Of course I was John Hamish Watson, which meant that I could not catch a break. Even though the red-hot passion of his return had faded to our usual gentle simmer – we were both in our fifties, damnation! – Sherlock spent virtually all his time when he was not looking for that damn jumper close by me and was visibly uneasy when we were apart. I even had to be in the garden when he tended to his bees as he said that he felt 'incomplete' with me out of sight. I of course felt the same but it made it nigh on impossible to get the jumper any further than the small tool-box in the front garden (I had to move it as sometimes certain, ahem, 'playthings' rolled under the bed when we.... you know). Nor did it help when his parents disobligingly wired back far too quickly saying that the dratted thing was indeed not in London. At least his fearsome mother did not send him one of her stories, although rather alarmingly she did indeed ask for more details about the jumper 'for her writings'. Gulp!

I finally got lucky just over a week later when Sherlock contracted a severe runny nose and had to rest on the couch all day. Although I had the correct medicines with which to treat it, I lied and said that I needed something from the chemist’s in the village as well as needing to order some of my favourite cologne from London of which I was running short (I was sure that I had had more than the single bottle that I had left but then I was never very good at keeping track of things like that as my mind was usually on far more important and mostly horizontal matters). He was obviously cross at not being able to go with me but I insisted he stay out of the driving rain. I was forced to give him a very thorough blow-job before he would let me go, but then as a doctor I had obligations to my patient which I felt obliged to fulfil. I always put my patients first.

Shut up!

It was a Monday when I finally got down to the village which I knew was when the other lady who took in washing, Mrs. Smith, did her laundry. I dropped the jumper off with her and explained that it was one of Sherlock’s favourites and could she get it cleaned as soon as possible? I am sure that she wondered why I had not given it to Mrs. Whitlow (the reason was because that woman could gossip for England and I was afraid she might let something slip), but Mrs. Smith smiled and took it. It seemed that I was going to get away with it.

After all these years, I really should have known better.

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Typically the weather now decided to frustrate my plans, the squally December rains continuing all day which meant that it would take a long time for the jumper to dry properly. I spent some time in the village tavern but when I returned to Mrs. Smith, she told me that it would not be dry until the following day. So I had to return without it.

The following afternoon I had to go in and pick the jumper up – so of course bloody Lazarus had recovered and wanted to go with me! God bless Mrs. Smith when she met us in the High Street that she said nothing about it, although heaven only knows what she thought I was playing at! Sherlock remained glued to my side and I reached home feeling slightly depressed that I had been unable to retrieve the thing. 

That was until we came back to the house and found something neatly folded on the table. Sherlock’s jumper. I stared at it incredulously while he read the note that had been left beside it.

“It is from Mrs. Whitlow”, he said. “Apparently it got separated from the other items in the wash and she only found it yesterday so she brought it with her today.” His eyes narrowed. “That is odd. I do not remember her carrying anything when she arrived earlier.”

“I did not see her”, I said, trying not to show my relief. The two washerwomen had clearly conspired to get my friend’s jumper back and spare me whatever embarrassment they thought I was due, and while I could probably never look either of them in the face ever again at least I was in the clear with Sherlock. He examined the item of clothing as if it were a clue to some terrible murder but then just smiled and took it away upstairs. I waited until he was gone before heaving a huge sigh of relief.

All together now. I really, _really_ should have known better!

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Sherlock was feeling particularly amorous that night, and cleared of the cloud that had hung over me in recent days I was more than happy to oblige. The blue ties came out and he bound my wrists and ankles to the four corners of the bed. I writhed ineffectually, my erection only increasing when he pulled out the black feather and began to run it down my chest. 

“Tell me about the jumper. John.”

I turned a colour that was probably redder than his best shirt. I was in no position to lie to him – I was in no position to do anything if truth be told! – and he clearly knew or at least suspected something was afoot.

“Keep your mind on the subject, John”, he growled, applying a cock-ring – the unmovable one, damn the fellow! – before rubbing the feather gently up and down my cock. “The jumper?”

“What about it?” I managed.

“Why did you get Mrs. Smith to wash it?” he asked.

I was now going from red to white. Put some oil in me and I could have acted as a flash-light!

“What do you mean?” I hedged. He sighed.

“Mrs. Whitlow always uses her own concoction of chemicals to wash our clothes”, he said. “Mrs. Smith, the only other lady who takes in washing in the village, uses a generic detergent. You know that I have a good sense of smell so I know that Mrs. Whitlow did not wash that shirt just as I know she did not bring it to the house today. Plus the note was clearly written by a left-handed person, yet Mrs. Whitlow from whom it purported to come is right-handed. What is going on?”

I blushed even more deeply.

“I had it”, I admitted.

He stopped his ministrations and stared at me.

“Why?” he asked.

“When you went to Scotland”, I said. “I kept going by sleeping with one of your shirts out of the laundry-basket. This time I took that woollen monstrosity knowing that you sweat when wearing it. It… kept me going. You know.”

This was so embarrassing. I did not think anything could make it worse, until Sherlock suddenly got out of bed and went across to his dressing-table, returning with a large glass cologne bottle. He sprayed a little on his hand and offered it to me.

“What does that smell of?” he asked.

I was confused but dutifully sniffed it.

“A bit like my cologne”, I said. “Have you been borrowing it?”

“No. Stealing it.”

I looked at him, now completely confused.

“What?”

“Like you I found surviving without the man I love very painful”, he said. “I barely slept at all during the Scottish trip without you there. So I took a bottle of your cologne in this bottle to London with me. I doused the sheets with it at night just so I could get some sleep. It worked a little but I still missed you terribly.”

I stared at him in shock.

“So you are as bad as me!” I protested.

“Stealing clothes?” he grinned. “Conspiring with the villagers to keep your 'crime' covered up? Openly lying to me?”

I scowled (it was so not a pout).

“I love it when you pout.”

I turned my back on him. Well, I would have done had I not been tied down. I had to settle for another scowl.

“That was mean!” I said sulkily. “You knew and you made me suffer!”

The feather was suddenly replaced by his smooth hand, gently rubbing me off.

“Then let me make it up to you”, he whispered.

And he did. Oh boy, how he did!

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	12. Interlude: Candyman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1907\. The suffragettes continue to drive their cause steadily backwards, while John gets some candy. Sort of.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

I sighed in annoyance as I read the 'Times'. 

“Those damn suffragettes are at it again!” I groused. “All right, they may have helped rid us of the odd bigoted sibling of yours but now they have gone and disrupted the State Opening of Parliament. Why can they not understand that such actions do their cause more harm than good?”

“Extremists often fail to see things through the point of view of anyone of dissimilar opinions to themselves”, my love said dryly.

I stared at him suspiciously. He was only on his second cup of coffee, and that sentence had been far too long for him at this time of a morning.

“Are you up to something?” I asked.

“Only to going back to bed and trying out those new panties that arrived yesterday!” he grinned. “You, there, naked, five minutes.”

And the bastard set about finishing his bacon leaving me gasping for breath. Though not as much as I was gasping for breath later. Seriously, they made candy-striped panties these days?

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	13. Case 361: The Adventure Of The Lion's Mane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1907\. John Watson had thought that little if anything could have persuaded him to leave his cottage and his insatiable blue-eyed lover – but when family calls for help he has to answer. Sherlock smells out the guilty party in this 'combustible' case.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

It was the summer of 1907 when our tranquil life was disturbed by the arrival of an unexpected visitor. It was June and, a little coincidentally as it turned out, England had just seen its first motor-racing track opened at Brooklands in nearby Surrey. Our caller was Sherlock's brother Guilford, now sixty-four years of age and thankfully rather less annoying. His marriage to Miss Petra Shepherd had turned him into something perilously approaching a respected Victorian gentleman which I supposed proved that miracles did indeed happen.

Although sadly not including the one which prevented Sherlock from giving me a warning look when I thought but did not say things like that! 

I asked what had brought our visitor to Sussex.

“You, doctor”, he said, to my surprise. “A gentleman called at Baker Street to talk to you on a matter of some urgency, and I needed to know if you wished to see them.”

“Who?” I asked.

“A Mr. Lionel Delaware.”

I shook my head. The name was unknown to me.

“He is a lawyer representing a young gentleman accused of industrial espionage at the place of his employment”, our visitor explained. “His client's name is Mr. Ivan Leeds.”

I tensed and looked across at Sherlock who immediately got up and came over to stand next to me, placing his hand reassuringly on my shoulder.

“Is the gentleman's client known to you?” Mr. Guilford Holmes asked, looking curiously between us. “Because I have to tell you, from what little he did say of the matter it does not look good.”

“Mr. Leeds is the son of a former acquaintance of John's, a Mrs. Elizabeth Leeds”, Sherlock said calmly. “We happened across them in a case back in 1889 when the lady's husband was wrongly suspected of trying to drive his grandfather mad. John also knew the young gentleman's father out in Egypt.”

Eighteen years. Except for that chance meeting in an Alresford bookshop I had not seen Ivan since Sherlock had put away his murderous uncle and I had nearly killed the vermin when he had attacked my son. I had remained in communication with his mother, and had put aside money for birthdays and Christmas in a bank account for his recent coming-of-age. The last photograph that I had received had coincidentally been not long before that great event; just as in our chance encounter in that Alresford book-shop there was rather too much of me in his looks although he did have Stevie's ridiculously long hair, a complete lion's mane. He also bore some resemblance to my nephew Jack who himself was almost eighteen years old. I was thankful that the two would almost certainly never meet, although given my luck I was not reliant on that never happening.

On reaching eighteen Ivan had with the help of a supporting letter of recommendation from myself (and Sherlock) obtained a place at the Leicester School Of Art And Science studying, of all things, vehicular technology. He had said in his letter of thanks that he hoped the day would come when everyone could afford one of these horseless carriages or auto-mobiles, a thought which had frankly made me shudder. His last letter had been a couple of months ago announcing that he had successfully completed his course – with honours! – and had obtained a job at a factory in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, where they produced not only assorted metal products but also experimental vehicles.

By all rights Ivan should have known that he was my son by now, as it was nine months since his mother Mrs. Leeds had written requesting a delay in informing the young man of his true parentage while his grandfather – not actually his grandfather, I thought sourly – Colonel Warburton struggled with what Ivan's mother had assured me was his final illness. Her last letter had said that the colonel was still losing ground so I had been anxiously preparing myself for the inevitable – and now this!

“What are they claiming that he has done?” I asked brusquely. Our visitor raised an eyebrow at my tone but did not comment on it.

“I do not have all the details of the case”, he said. “That is for the lawyers. But I believe it all comes down to the fact that a rival factory produced something identical to what they were working on, and they believe that he leaked some plans to them.”

“Why would he do that?” Sherlock asked.

“You would have to meet with the lawyer to find that out”, Sherlock's brother said. “Normally your Mrs. Rockland would have just forwarded the lawyer's request for a meeting to your last known location, but seeing as it was urgent and I wished to call in on what is left of poor Carl I decided to bring the news myself. I am guessing from the look on the doctor's face that you will be wanting to see him?”

“Definitely!” Sherlock said. “Did this Mr. Delaware give you his card?”

His brother nodded and handed him the card.

“We shall inform Mr. Delaware that we are fortunately on a return trip to Great Britain”, Sherlock said firmly, “and would welcome the chance to discuss the case with him at his earliest convenience. He can contact us through Baker Street.”

I placed my hand over his in thanks. He had not even hesitated. I was sure that I could not love him any more, but I would try.

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One of the best rooms in the little cottage (after the main bedroom of course!) was the bathroom which was positively luxurious for such a place. While we had been waiting for the transfer of the property Sherlock had with the permission of the seller taken the opportunity to knock through to an adjoining large cupboard, making the bathroom large enough to incorporate a huge iron bath. I do mean huge; the two of us could fit in it easily.

I was stressed after Mr. Guilford Holmes's visit, so much so that for once I did not notice that Sherlock was not by my side. When I came to that realization, there was a brief moment of panic before I heard the bath running. An odd time for a soak in the middle of the day I thought, and stuck my head round the door to ask him why. 

He was standing there completely naked. As usual I drooled.

“Come here, John”, he said gently. 

I walked unhesitatingly towards him. The thought to ask why never crossed what little remained of my mind, and even that began to crumble when he slowly started to remove my clothes.

“This has been a shock to you”, he said quietly, pausing to turn off the taps. The room smelled of honeyed bath salts and I took advantage of his pause to run my nose all over his chest and under his arms taking in the glorious scent of my mate. Whatever this case threw at me – and my son – I knew that in here I was safe. 

Sherlock smiled and let me do what I wanted until I was ready, then finished undressing me and led me into the bath seating himself behind me and easing me down to rest against him. I was surprised that he was not even hard but then neither was I.

He slowly began to wash me down with the ivory soap that he still preferred, and I leaned into the scent of it. It brought back a brief memory of the time when that scent had been all I had left of Sherlock, those terrible years after Reichenbach when I had thought him dead, but that only served to remind me of his return and our happiness since and I smiled lazily. He stood me up and lathered me all over then held the soap out to me to do the same for him. Still neither of us was hard and I was not surprised. This, not sex, was what I needed right now. Trust the man with whom I held the closest of bonds to know that without my even saying a word.

We both slipped back beneath the waters to sponge ourselves off, and once we were done Sherlock pulled me close. Despite its antique appearance the bath had a heating device fitted which kept the water warm for a considerable time so we could continue to soak there in comfort. It was designed so the taps were at the side, meaning that we could also sit facing each other. Which was good because Sherlock eased me round to face him then set himself to wash my hair. I sighed happily as he did so, and once he was done I did his as well.

Even with the heater, the water was now getting cold and Sherlock got us out before drying us off with a huge towel. Normally rubbing my naked body against my man's would have had only one outcome but this time we both remained quiet, content to have each other close. Once we were dry he led me out and to the bedroom where he slipped us both under the covers.

It is probably an unmanly thing to admit to, but sometimes I had an almost insatiable need to cu.... to come and be held by my mate. Of course he knew that this was one of those times and he gently took hold of me as I eased up against his muscled body, sighing happily as I surrendered to sleep. The world and its troubles could wait a little longer. John had his Sherlock and that was all that truly mattered.

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The meeting with Mr. Lionel Delaware took place in his Wellingborough offices on the following Sunday. In the days leading up to it Sherlock proved that he was as sure-footed as ever in our relationship, never missing a chance to touch me for reassurance and always allowing me to be as close to him as I wanted. I do not know why but the threat to my son made me that much needier than normal, not so much for sex as for simple contact. Thankfully I had Sherlock so that need was more than fulfilled.

“I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you have decided to help with this case, gentlemen”, the lawyer said, wiping his forehead. He was a short almost round fellow in his late forties, with a small birthmark on his cheek and rapidly receding blond hair. “Frankly I had my doubts when my client claimed an acquaintanceship with Doctor Watson here – it has been my bitter experience that some accused people will claim anything when under duress – but it was all true.”

“We are delighted to help”, Sherlock said. “The young gentleman's mother is indeed an old friend of the doctor's and his father was known to him during his time in Egypt. Now please tell us about this case.”

The lawyer sighed and sat back in his plush chair.

“It is very bad”, he said. “I do not like to say, it but I can see no way that Mr. Leeds cannot be guilty despite what he says. However I have read the doctor's books and I know of your ability to produce miracles from time to time. One is certainly needed now!”

I could feel my spirits dropping.

“The event concerning my client occurred up to and over the weekend of the fourteenth and the fifteenth”, the lawyer went on. “Without wishing to deviate into technicalities which I find confusing if not incomprehensible, the men at the works were building an auto-mobile powered not by steam as is usual but by this new-fangled diesel engine. I should also say that the technological side of the business is relatively small and consists of precisely three developers, one of whom was Mr. Leeds.”

“I am surprised that they have the time to do it”, I ventured.

“That ties in with the case”, the lawyer said. “The government periodically funds the development side, but like all governments they expect something in return. Now that the rival office in Derby has produced a vehicle that performs reasonably well it is likely that there will be less money for my client's workplace.”

“Are we to assume that the new Derby vehicle 'just happens' to bear a striking resemblance to the plans drawn up miles away in Wellingborough?” Sherlock asked dryly. 

The lawyer nodded.

“Mr. Leeds explained to me that they had just overcome one of the major obstacles in making the design feasible for mass production”, he said. “Only one, and they had several more to go, but it would make any test vehicle considerably more efficient. He is remarkably adept at what I would call putting mechanics into plain English; he said that once they can get a few vehicles out onto the roads and used by those rich enough to afford them, then there will be what he called a 'domino effect' as the cars get better and cheaper so people lower down the social scale can afford them, which.... you see how it should go.”

“On Saturday evening my client along with the other two men left their office having locked it with the plans safely inside, after which they all went their separate ways. Mr. Leeds was attacked by at least three men while walking along the riverside path and left unconscious. He had taken the slightly longer walk to his house through the park, and as he was left in a storage hut there was little likelihood that he would be discovered. Only the fact that he was due to meet a lady friend off the train the following evening and that she had the wit to call the police when he did not appear, initiated the search that found him. He had also been drugged; I can only assume that chloroform was used in the attack and that they opted to keep so young and fit a man under to make him easier to handle.”

I winced at my own flesh and blood being treated like that.

“The plans?” Sherlock asked, somehow managing to edge closer to me without seemingly moving.

“He is adamant that they remained locked in the office”, the lawyer said, “although of course that does not preclude copies having been made. Four days later the rival establishment in Derby produced a test vehicle with the exact same improvement that Mr. Leeds had been working on. I am afraid that there is still more. When the police searched his house they found not only a return railway ticket from Wellingborough to Derby for Sunday morning, clipped, but five hundred pounds† in cash.”

“Why would the police be searching _his_ house for?” I asked testily. “They were supposed to be finding his attackers!”

“I am rather afraid that they were driven by the works manager and Mr. Leeds's superior, a Mr. Major”, the lawyer said, a look of distaste on his face. “One of those upstart fellows who thinks that he has to be a Man of Action to be respected; I am sure that you have often encountered his sort. The actual works owner Mr. Samuel Primrose has been helpfulness itself in what few inquiries that I have been able to make thus far, but Mr. Major is convinced of his employee's guilt.”

“Or possibly trying to mask his own”, Sherlock said. “Who is the investigating officer, please?”

The lawyer's face cleared somewhat.

“There at least we have been fortunate”, he said. “Sergeant Richards is a good man; he was very firm with Mr. Major when he tried to tell him how to pursue the investigation, asking him if he would be equally prepared for a local constable to start telling him how to design his vehicles! I am sure that he will wait for facts rather than seek out only those that support a certain viewpoint. My poor client needs all the help he can get.”

“Then it is to the sergeant that we must address ourselves”, Sherlock said. “Mr. Delaware, may I ask you a somewhat impertinent question to finish? You do not of course have to answer.”

The lawyer looked surprised. 

“You may, sir”, he said warily.

“Who is paying your fees in this case?”

“Captain Matthew Leeds of course. Mr. Leeds's father.”

“Of course”, Sherlock said.

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“It is very obviously a set-up”, Sherlock said as we drove to the police-station. “What sort of attackers mug a man, leave him unconscious but not dead, then contrive to not search his house for the money that they were presumably after? Unfortunately the pressure is always on the police to find a solution, and less obvious things than that have been overlooked in the past. Do not worry, John. You saved him once before and we shall save him this time.”

I wished that I could have shared his confidence. But he took my hand, so I felt a little better.

I felt even better after we had met Sergeant Brent Richards, who seemed the sort of policemen that we needed on this case. A young fellow (again), tall with short-cropped black curly hair, he was fully prepared to let Sherlock and I look at the evidence although he did admit that things looked black for my son.

“The money was drawn out of a recently opened bank account at Lloyd's Bank in Derby on Thursday the twelfth”, he said. “A false name, of course. I do however have more hopes of the railway ticket. No-one at the station remembers seeing Mr. Leeds and he often went there to see his lady-friend off on the train. She lives in Irchester, the next stop south of here towards London.”

“Do you have his ticket to Derby?” Sherlock asked.

The sergeant produced an envelope and tipped out a second-class Midland Railway return ticket.

“As you can see it has been clipped twice”, he said, pointing to where the train conductors had marked the ticket at each end.

Sherlock smiled and I felt my spirits rising again. He knew something!

“As I understand it”, he said, “the contention of Mr. Major is that Mr. Leeds faked the attack, then took a train to Derby to hand over the plans. He then returned here and faked being drugged so as to deflect suspicion from himself?”

“That is exactly his contention sir”, the sergeant said. “Because of the late hour at which he left work that Saturday that would have had to have been a Sunday morning train; he could have reached Derby that night but there is no train back. Expresses don't stop at somewhere as small as our little town.”

Sherlock made some notes about the ticket markings in a notebook.

“With luck we may be able to prove Mr. Leeds's innocence from that ticket alone”, he said. “That being the case we have four other suspects in the case; Mr. Major, his two fellow employees and his lady-friend who alerted the police when he failed to show for their date on Sunday.”

The sergeant nodded and opened a folder.

“Ladies first”, he said. “Miss Alexandra Ockham, aged twenty-one. One of those aggressive, modern women; I would not call her a lady if only because she would I am sure take offence! She lives with her mother and two sisters at a house in Irchester close to the railway station. She has been dating Mr. Leeds pretty much since he came here in July. He was due to meet her at the station on Sunday but of course failed to show. She waited a little while then walked to his house and found it empty. A neighbour told her that Mr. Leeds had not been home the day before – I love nosy neighbours! – and she started worrying. She came to the station and we initiated the search that found him just under an hour later. It would have been sooner but he took the riverside walk home rather than the more direct route past the edge of town. They are digging up the road in town just now and it is very dusty that way.”

Sherlock looked pointedly at the sergeant, who blushed.

“I had Constable Davis down in Irchester take her statement”, he said. “He is very sharp, one of our best men. When he brought me it, he said that he thought she was doing that lying without lying thing.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“You mean that everything she told the constable may have been true, but that she did not tell the constable everything”, Sherlock said. “A sharp fellow indeed; in our long years of work far too many people have tried that trick. What was Miss Ockham doing when Mr. Leeds was attacked?” 

“He asked her that”, the sergeant said. “She last saw Mr. Leeds on Thursday when she met him at the works. She said that he was very excited over his new discovery, though of course she knows nothing about mechanics so it all went over her head. She says that she just nodded and praised him a lot. Saturday she went shopping in Northampton and spent the evening with her parents. Sunday morning she took the first train up to see her dotty grandmother who lives in Kettering just north of here and cooked a Sunday dinner for her, returning here to meet – or not – Mr. Leeds. Her train came in on time at five to four; the station-master remembers speaking to her as she left.”

An alibi for the time of the attack, I noted. Although whoever did it must have used hired thugs, so that meant little or northing. 

“Quite a contrast when we come to young Mr. Leeds's work colleagues”, the sergeant said. “Mr. Walter Burley, fifty-one, has been with the company over thirty years and seems totally respectable in every way. But his alibi for the time of the attack is poor. He went to the local pub and his wife did not remember him returning home that night. One or two people in the pub claimed to have seen him but their reliability as witnesses.... well! Sunday morning he went to church with his wife. I checked that and it was confirmed. He seemed to get on well enough with the accused, even Mr. Major had to admit that.”

“Grudgingly, I bet!” I said. Sherlock smiled at my cynicism.

“You are right”, the sergeant said. “I would favour the other employee, Mr. Gerald Brown. Twenty-four, a right little know-all and – here's the good part – the previous recipient of Miss Ockham's favours before Mr. Leeds came to town and she upgraded to a better model. Our Mr. Brown thinks a great deal of himself, without much cause; Mr. Major made a point of telling me – twice – that there was no love lost between the two young men. Typically the sod has a pretty much watertight alibi for the time of the attack. He was helping out with a theatre group that he works with in town. He might have been able to slip away for a few minutes perhaps but nothing more. There's no way he can have left town and got back again, though like the others he could have hired someone else to do the attack. Sunday morning he also went to church and the vicar remembers talking to him as he left.”

“What about Mr. Major himself?” Sherlock asked.

“Mr. Johannus St. Cloud Invincible Tripolitania Solomon Major, so he clearly had cruel parents!” the sergeant grinned. “Fifty-eight, been with the company since forever and rumour is that they were thinking of moving or forcibly retiring him. Bit of a bully in my opinion; in fact a lot of one if I am being honest. He clearly dislikes Mr. Leeds, but now that the rival place up in Derby has produced a decent vehicle he himself may get the sack or they may even close down the department here. So not that much of a motive. He said that he was at home all Saturday evening and Sunday morning; his wife backed that up but she is scared witless of him so that means little.”

Sherlock nodded.

“I think”, he said, “it would be in your interests to concentrate on the money. Quite clearly five hundred pounds was paid into a bank account and then withdrawn so as to create a link with Derby. Most people do not have that sort of money lying around so someone must have obtained it somehow. The most likely way is a short-term loan; perhaps your colleagues in Derby can go round the local banks and loan sharks to see if anyone has borrowed that sum or something slightly in excess of it recently.”

The sergeant nodded and moved to close the file. I saw that it actually had a photograph of Ivan attached to it and he caught me looking.

“Latest technology”, he said. “We photograph anyone we arrest and add their picture to the record. Don't think much of it myself seeing as how people can change their looks so easily but the higher-ups love it as Being Seen To Use New Technology, so we have to do it.”

I nodded. Ivan must have cut his lion's mane recently I noticed, and he looked as miserable as I felt. Sherlock also looked at the photo, frowned for some reason, then turned to the sergeant.

“While we are gone”, he said writing something on his notepad, “you could do me one extra favour if you would.”

“Of course, sir”, the sergeant said. “What is it?”

“Ask Mr. Leeds that question”, Sherlock said tearing a sheet out of his notepad and passing it over. “We are for the local railway station. Let us hope that Lady Luck is with is!”

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As it was lunch-time and my stomach chose the steps of the police-station to inform me (and Sherlock, and a startled passer-by!) of that fact, we decided to adjourn to a local restaurant before going to the station. The establishment we chose was pleasant enough although there were three somewhat unsavoury young fellows in the corner who were eyeing us up for some reason. I was glad to leave the place especially as they did not even serve anything with chocolate, the heathens! 

At the railway-station Sherlock sought out the station-master and asked him about the line's conductors.

“What I wish to know”, he said, “is whether you can tell me who the conductor was on a certain train and if he would have remained on just one route?”

The station-master scratched his bald head.

“Well, I could probably tell you, sir”, he said. “The conductors they work the same route week after week, so if you know the train I can say who was on it easily enough. But you'd then have to go and ask them if they stuck to their schedule; sometimes they change with illnesses and the like. Though if you're well enough to breathe you're well enough to work, that's my view!”

I smiled at his forthrightness.

“The train that I am concerned with would have been the first one from here to Derby on a Sunday morning”, Sherlock said.

“That'd be Ethelbert, Mr. Cowper”, the station-master said unhesitatingly. “He's local and works the semi-fasts from London as far as Leicester. Goes up and down the line several times a day and always catches the last train to his home just outside Leicester. Works every Sunday – you know how some folks won't do that – then usually takes Tuesday off to make up for it. Sound fellow.”

“I understand that when this railway company clips their passengers' tickets they do so with a code”, Sherlock said. “I have a ticket with '17A' on it. Can you tell me what those numbers mean, please?”

“Seventeen is Mr. Cowper's route, the semi-fast from London as far as Leicester, sir”, the station-master explained. “Each conductor has his own clippers, with a different letter on them; there's hell to pay if they lose them! Mr. Cowper's letter is 'A', so he had to have clipped that ticket.”

“Do you happen to know where Mr. Cowper is now?” Sherlock asked. 

“He'll be through on the last train tonight, the eight-fifteen”, the station-master said. “If you wanted to catch him you could buy a ticket to Finedon and talk with him on the train. Unless it's a long conversation you'd be wanting in which case buy through to Kettering.”

“I have but two questions for him”, Sherlock said with a smile. “Thank you, sir. You have been extremely helpful.”

A coin changed hands and we left.

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Outside the station I was concerned to see that the three ruffians had followed us from the restaurant. I wished that I had brought my revolver, now in my bag at the local hotel where we had booked in for the night. To my surprise Sherlock left my side and walked over to them. There was some muted conversation then he returned; the three men hurried away.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Those were the three men who attacked your son”, he said.

“We should have them arrested!” I said at once. To my surprise he shook his head.

“They were hired hands”, he said. “We want the person who paid them; the organ-grinder rather than the monkeys. If Mr. Cowper confirms what the station-master told us about him then we will be one step closer to securing them!”

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There was no sign of the ruffians when we returned to the station that evening but I was glad that we dropped in on the police-station on the way there and even gladder when Sergeant Richards said that he would accompany us. At the station we met the station-master again, who told us he had wired ahead for us and that Mr. Cowper would alight from the train to talk with us provided that the conversation was kept brief. In fact Sherlock spoke with the fellow for barely thirty seconds, then thanked him and paid him for his time.

“I asked Mr. Leeds your question, sir”, the sergeant said. “He said it was the day before the attack. Apparently Miss Ockham did not like his long hair so he thought he would surprise her with cutting it. Like Samson.”

“Let us hope that the consequences are rather less grave!” Sherlock smiled. “Did you have any luck with tracing that money?” 

“A Mr. Cheam borrowed five hundred pounds from the North Midland Bank in Derby about a month ago”, he said. “A false name of course. The manager who made the loan said that he was a slight gentleman, quite young but of good character. At least until they came to want the money back and found they'd been kippered!”

“Three of your local youths beat up Mr, Leeds”, Sherlock said. “They used a similar description of the fellow who employed them, except that they also said he had smelled really badly of cologne. Which is what I expected.”

“Why?” the sergeant asked clearly confused.

“Let us get back to the warmth of the police station and I will tell you”, Sherlock smiled.

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“This crime”, Sherlock began, “started shortly after the arrival of Mr. Ivan Leeds to Wellingborough and his employment at the technical department of Wayland Industries. It rapidly became clear to his co-workers that he was a young man of exceptional talent, and in a situation where the department might be reduced at short notice that provoked some alarm. In one person in particular who felt that they had more to lose than most.”

“Who?” I asked

“Miss Alexandra Ockham”, he said calmly.

We both stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Consider”, he said. “She is dating Mr. Gerald Brown at the time. Mr. Brown is, despite his over-inflated opinion of himself, unexceptional and might easily be the first to go if the department is reduced in size. So the two of them hatch a plan. First, Miss Ockham dumps Mr. Brown for the more attractive Mr. Leeds. Few would be surprised at such a development; except most probably Mr. Brown himself at the incomprehensible lack of public astonishment to the woman rejecting someone so _eminently_ superior!”

I smiled at that. He continued.

“Next, Miss Ockham disguises herself as a man called Mr. Cheam and travels to Derby with a false identity to borrow some five hundred pounds from a bank there. It is vitally important that since they wish to tarnish Mr. Leeds, a link is established to the town where the rival works exists. Still in disguise she secures the services of three of Wellingborough's less reputable citizens to attack the man that she is now dating. She knows that the sense of smell, albeit often under-rated, is actually important in the way it makes people think and that it will make her seem more of a man. Unfortunately she rather overdoes things; you might wish to see if there is any of it in her house sergeant, as I think that she would find such a thing hard to explain.”

The sergeant nodded but stayed silent.

“On Thursday Miss Ockham visits Mr. Leeds at the works and he mentions that they have achieved a technological breakthrough”, Sherlock went on. “She knows that now is the time to strike. Doubtless like too many young bucks Mr. Leeds assumes that the technological spiel that he inflicts on his lady-friend goes clear over her head, but although she may not fully grasp the technical details, his report of the breakthrough is what causes her to set her own plans in motion. He must have previously told her – or rather boasted to her – that a breakthrough was imminent, so she was prepared.”

“An essential part of her plans is that the attack has to take place on a Saturday. It is here however that she has her first piece of bad luck. Perhaps nettled by her temporary beau's happiness at his success, she makes a comment about his overly long hair and he decides to cut it without telling her. The lion loses his mane on Friday, the consequences of which will shortly become clear.”

“On Saturday her hired ruffians do their work and place Mr. Leeds drugged and asleep in the place that she asked. They then guard him to make sure that he does not wake too soon. It is imperative that he is out cold while Miss Ockham puts the next stage of her plan into action.”

“What was that, sir?” the sergeant asked.

“Miss Ockham goes to Mr. Leeds's house, leaves the money where it can easily be found – something that no normal person would have done – and dresses herself in his clothes”, Sherlock said. “She has already dyed her hair blonde and concealed it under a hat and now she unfurls it – but in so doing she unwittingly makes her first mistake. Mr. Leeds had had his hair cut the day before, but in pretending to be him she assumes that he still has a full lion's mane and heads to the railway station under a fulsome set of locks. If she is spotted and remembered, it will make Mr. Leeds's claims over the attack look suspect to say the least. Unfortunately for her she is not, at least not on the station itself.”

“Meanwhile Mr. Brown has returned unnoticed to the works and has obtained the copy of the plans that his rival has been working on. These he brings to his partner in crime at the railway-station. He cannot have been among those who attacked his rival otherwise he would surely have spotted the obvious and corrected her error over the hair.”

“I learned from my inquiries that on some railways – and fortunately the Midland Railway is one of them – each conductor has a personalized set of clippers”, Sherlock said. “Mr. Ethelbert Cowper who was on the train to Derby that Miss Ockham took on Sunday morning had 17A on his clippers, denoting the route that he worked as well as his personal letter. He duly clipped her ticket to Leicester shortly after her train left Wellingborough. She made a point of approaching him hoping that he would recognize her as Mr. Leeds and might later report the sighting to the police. When I asked Mr. Cowper, he did indeed confirm that a long-haired gentleman smelling rather strongly of cologne had insisted on having his ticket punched shortly after boarding the train at Wellingborough. Most annoyingly for Miss Ockham, the police did not fully check her alibi so did not talk to him. However it is but a minor annoyance to her; she proceeds to Leicester where she alights.”

“Why Leicester?” I asked.

“It is where she meets her confederate from the Derby works”, Sherlock said. “We were told that there was no train that would have got someone to Derby and back that evening, but it was possible to go to Leicester and back. There is just time for her to hand over the copies of the plans that Mr. Brown has supplied her with and then to return as far as her grandmother's house in Kettering. We were told that that lady was 'dotty'; if she had been asked and had remarked on her grand-daughter's arriving later than had been claimed her evidence would likely have been dismissed.”

“Upon entering the train heading back the way that she has just come, the apparently leonine young gentleman goes to the toilets and changes back into Miss Alexandra Ockham. Her disguise is abandoned somewhere along the line once the train is clear of the station; I do not think that she would have wished to wait for long so it may well be possible to find it.”

“But she has now unwittingly made her second mistake. She resumed her appearance before Kettering but she forgot to resume her _smell_. That was the other question that I asked Mr. Cowper. A very observant fellow, he recalled being surprised that he had had _two_ customers that day who seemed to have bathed in cologne, especially as the second one was a lady. The description of the second malodorous passenger that he gave matched Miss Ockham perfectly – so why was she so doused with gentlemen's cologne?”

“Meanwhile Mr. Brown or one of his ruffian confederates has been keeping an eye on Mr. Leeds, dosing him with chloroform any time that he looked to be coming round. Once Miss Ockham arrived back she went as planned to call at Mr. Leeds's house, left the incriminating clipped ticket that she herself had just travelled on, and played her part of the concerned lady-friend while secretly rejoicing at the apparent destruction of her true love Mr. Brown's rival. Although she likely had a bad moment when Mr. Brown rejoined her and pointed out her mistake about the hair.”

“Is there any evidence?” I wondered.

“Possibly her being seen on a southbound train from Leicester to Kettering'”, Sherlock said. “Somewhere along the line just south of Kettering a set of clothes, possibly even with finger-prints on them. The cologne in her room down in Irchester where Mr. Leeds has not gone. I also think that she will find it hard to explain why _her_ finger-prints are on that ticket to Leicester, a ticket that she should never have been anywhere near. No, they will get her my friend.”

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They did. The sergeant agreed to release Ivan into my custody pending a formal dismissal of charges which he was sure would soon follow. I had wanted to see my son from the moment that we arrived in the town but a mixture of fears that we might fail him and that I was, after all, someone that he barely knew had held me back. 

When he finally emerged I stared in shock. Even the unflappable Sherlock standing close behind me let out a gasp. The photograph had totally underplayed his appearance. Even more than back in that Alresford bookshop he was a younger version of me, perhaps a tad taller and with shorter hair but there was no doubt about it. He was my son.

I had a son. Yet I had not. I could not ruin his life by charging in and taking more than I had been blessed with. He looked at me and smiled.

“You saved me, sir”, he said. “Again.”

My heart broke. Again.

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_Notes:_   
_† At least £52,000 ($66,000) at 2020 prices._

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	14. Interlude: Holy Cow And Holidays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1907\. Chuffingden sees a welcome departure as Sherlock is mildly deceitful (in much the same way that the Pope is mildly Catholic), and John marks Christmas with the usual restraint(s).

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

I turned fifty-five this year and Sherlock duly marked the day in an appropriate and restrained manner. Safe to say that I was still aching when we went to church three days later and the vicar gave me the sort of look that told me his ultimate superior had probably tipped him off as to why. I made a larger than usual donation to the plate and sent a few extra prayers heavenwards, just to be on the safe side. Thank heavens for the ladies who put those embroidered cushions on those rock-hard pews even if they did smirk knowingly as I lowered myself onto said cushions very gingerly!

As it happened St. James's Church was the scene of our next little local adventure. A tiny building that was Saxon in parts, the vicar had long cherished hopes of extending it but it had a graveyard that curved around it on three sides so that left only the land on the north side. Unfortunately said land was owned by the one person that the village could well have done without, Miss Virginia Hastings-Ryland (the only woman in the place not to have simpered at Sherlock, which I suppose proves that miracles do happen!). Her family had once owned the manor house that had lain between the village and neighbouring Alciston, but bad investments and poor judgement had combined to force them to sell up and move elsewhere – except for the one family member that, unfortunately but understandably, they had left behind (sadly not under the ruins of their former home!). Mr. Torrin, the owner of The Majestic Duck and a gentleman of some consequence in the village had tried to buy her field for the church, but the unpleasant Miss Hastings-Ryland had refused to sell.

She had however reckoned without my man, who most annoyingly still got simpering looks from all the other ladies in the village (what was I, chopped liver?). The ghastly woman took great pleasure in telling the vicar very loudly one Sunday that she had sold the land to a small religious sect whose leader wanted to built 'The True House Of The Lord' next to the 'false' one (i.e. his). I remarked to Sherlock that what with that land only having limited access from a footpath around the back I would have doubted that any new building would be possible. He just grinned at me. And when I suggested that it was a very unchristian thing to so delude a woman even if it was Miss Hastings-Ryland, he took me home and showed me something even more unchristian! Oh my poor broken (but wonderfully sated) body! 

We also had the bonus that Sherlock's purchase of the land meant that the harridan could now afford to join the rest of her family by the sea now, for which I was sure they would be truly grateful (I know everyone in the village certainly was; Mr. Torrin threw a huge party once she had left). Yes, my man was a sneaky bastard. 

And best of all he was _my_ sneaky bastard!

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We had a welcome visitor to the cottage that December, my nephew Jack. Well, fairly welcome, even if he did allude to the fact that I may have gone every so slightly further than was the norm in decorating the cottage (fortunately for him he did not push it, otherwise I might 'accidentally' mention the twelve sets of Festive Panties that I had laid in to mark the Twelve Days of Christmas!)

I remember this visit because Jack, who had become a journalist at the 'Times' with only a little help from Sherlock, mentioned that the recent _entente_ with Russia might not be as good a thing as all the experts were claiming.

“Why not?” I had asked. “Surely the more countries on our side in a battle, the better?”

“Because although it may deter a small-scale war, it will mean that a major conflict will likely drag in everybody”, he had said. “The Continent is divided up into two warring camps, and those alliances could drag in everyone if just one domino goes over.”

We could not then know either that we were less than seven years away from seeing the first domino fall, or the terrible consequences that would unfold as a result. For our Nation and, in some ways, for us personally.

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	15. Interlude: Treachery And Toblerone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1908\. John gets a shock when someone rats on a deal in such a way that not even Sherlock can put things right. There are sports events, ideal homes and an annexation that again comes close to sending the Continent spinning into war.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.(retired)]_

Despite the care and love of the greatest man in the whole wide world, nothing could stop me from feeling plain _old_ at times (especially after the way we had marked the festive season at the start of the year!). The first powered flight had taken place in the United States shortly before our retirement, and the year of my son Ivan's case had seen the British Army's first powered airship† heralding a new age of war that would now take to the skies. As with my concerns over eugenics which I mentioned elsewhere I increasingly felt that technology was a mixed blessing, and that Mankind might come to rue inventing some things sooner rather than later. Plus I still reserved a special dislike for those ghastly 'auto-mobiles' although my son clearly loved the metal death-traps!

That spring I read of the final passing of old Colonel Warburton down in Hampshire, and immediately wondered if his mother would now honour her promise and inform our son of his true ancestry. So my son's next letter came as a bolt from the blue; I knew that his mother had herself been ill over the winter but it had been much more serious than I had been led to believe, and she had followed her father-in-law into the hereafter within the month. Worse, she had failed to tell Ivan the truth as she had promised! I felt cheated as if I had somehow 'lost' a son but Ivan remained in contact with me after the events of Northamptonshire and I supposed that at least I was an honorary second father. Even if it was a poor consolation prize.

All right, the long session of manly embracing did make up for it a little. And Sherlock bought me a new type of nougat-confection called 'Toblerone' whose delicious little triangles I may have had more than a few off – I was testing them out, and I was sure that there had not been six blocks of the things as Sherlock had claimed. So we manfully embraced and he very loudly did not say The Word That Started With The Third Letter Of The Alphabet And Rhymed With Huddling.

The not-smirk was as annoying as ever, though!

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Over one hundred and forty medals, more than fifty of them gold, marked the Olympic Games being held in London that summer. We had received an invitation but did not go; I found that I increasingly disliked crowds, preferring the quiet of our cottage. Or at least the quiet when Sherlock was not making me scream, that was! The knowing look that I got from the vicar one particular Sunday was frankly mortifying, especially when he mentioned how much he enjoyed 'the peace and quiet of walking in the countryside, _most_ of the time!' Nor did I attend the first-ever Ideal Home Exhibition in the capital that same year. My home was ideal enough provided it had a Sherlock in it.

That summer also saw another European crisis. Readers may remember our Turkish adventure from Montague Street back in 'Seventy-Eight (The Adventure Of The Fearful Fugitives; thirty years ago so no need to say it!), and after that time a most curious arrangement had been effected in the Balkans whereby the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina remained the property of the Ottoman Empire but were administered by the Austrians. The small independent nation of Serbia coveted these areas as many Serbs also lived there so, fearful of efforts to prize them away or encourage an independence movement in them, Vienna now decided to take advantage of Ottoman problems elsewhere and annex them. The Serbs protested to the Russians but the Czar was not prepared for a full-scale European war so a crisis was once more averted. For now.

There was one passing of note that year, although neither Sherlock nor I dwelt on it. Lady Amelia Dundas died, of a stroke apparently. I wish that I could say that I mourned her, but frankly I was glad that she was gone and that that chapter of Sherlock's life was closed.

I really should have known better.

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_Notes:_   
_† 'Nulli Secundus' (Latin: second to none). 122 feet (37 metres) long and with a top speed of 16 m.p.h, it lasted one month before crashing. It was rebuilt the following year as the 'Nulli Secundus II' (?) which managed one flight before it was scrapped and its engines recycled in the construction of the equally originally-named British Army Aeroplane No. 1, which was 38 feet (12 metres) long and had a top speed of 65 m.p.h._

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	16. Interlude: Lady In Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1908\. A certain writer of fan-fiction finds out that one of her sons has been behaving less than honourably, and she does not need to be any sort of a detective to work out which one.

_[Narration by Lady Aelfrida Holmes]_

I was Cross, or as dear Anna would have put it, a Level Five. This was Seriously Not On!

Randall looked around desperately for any chance of escape, but Muriel was blocking the door and I had my pistol ready in my bag. I had Told him a few weeks ago that I knew full well he was up to something and that he had better stop it, but as usual he had decided that he was above that. 

No.

“Dear Mrs. Zeuson wrote to me from Suffolk”, I told him. “Apparently someone has been campaigning covertly against a friend of hers, a Doctor Anderson†, who wishes to become mayor of her home town. That someone, she has found out, is _you!”_

He looked frankly constipated. He may have been aiming for pitiful, but he missed it by several miles.

“But Mother”, he whined, “Doctor Anderson is a _woman!”_

We both stared at him, waiting to see how long it would take for him to get it. Of course he did not.

“And why cannot a woman be a mayor?” Muriel asked frostily.

“Women cannot be in charge”, he said firmly. “Lord knows where that would end. Next thing we would have a woman prime minister!”

I had actually quite fancied myself in such a role, and his remarks only annoyed me even more.

“Clearly you have too much time on your hands if you can meddle with the local politics of East Anglia”, I said firmly. “And if you wish to know what women in charge would be like, I think my new 'Lady In Red' series needs editing.”

“An excellent idea”, Muriel agreed. “I read that and it quite inspired me. By the time he has finished that I should have my own next work done as well.”

He shuddered for some reason. I had no idea why; I was being very generous to him all things considered. But if he continued to annoy friends of mine, that would end very suddenly!

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_Notes:_   
_† Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917). Co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first dean of a medical school and the first woman to be elected to a school board. She duly became the first ever lady mayor of Aldeburgh that November. Quite a gal!_

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	17. Interlude: Gladiators And Greengages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1908\. Sherlock and John help out a young friend, and John discovers that vegetables can indeed be bad for some people. And not just in eating them.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

One of the lesser problems of having money was knowing when to help out people without seeming like one was interfering. John and had both kept an eye out for our friend LeStrade's grandson Galahad whose physical prowess (of which John had not been the least bit jealous, of course!) had brought us our penultimate case from Baker Street. We knew that he had just finished training to be a doctor but we both suspected that his family background might make gaining a foothold in his chosen profession more difficult than it should have done, even in so cosmopolitan a city as London. Our good friend Ginger helped monitor him for us and told us that this was indeed the case so we arranged for Lady Radnor, patroness of one of the most prestigious surgeries in the West End, to see the picture that he and his friend Mr. West had done as 'Gladiators At The Baths' (we had both seen said picture and it was safe to say that it had left almost _nothing_ to the imagination!). 

Galahad had a job offer that same evening. He also had a second offer from Lady Radnor – yes the sixty-one year-old Lady Radnor who was married with five children! – that extended to he and his friend doing a whole set of photographs on condition that Her Ladyship could 'sit in' while the pictures were being taken! As John so rightly said, the nobility these days!

But at least the money was good.

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John laughed as he read the newspaper that cold November day.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That horrible politician Mr. Dominick Gryphon has hit the headlines again”, he smiled.

“The one who is always going on about the decline in moral standards these days”, I said. “Indeed.”

I had overplayed my hand. He looked across at me suspiciously.

“What do you know?” he demanded.

“He tried to get some friends of his in the police service to close down one of Sweyn's molly-houses”, I said, passing him a sheet of paper. “So I applied to our friend Ginger and asked him what he could find on the fellow. Considering his physical repulsiveness one would not have thought that he went in for that sort of thing.”

He went suddenly very white, so obviously he had got to the bit about the celery. That was bad, although not as bad as the greengages. Wait until he reached the eggplants.....

From that pained yelp, he just had!

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	18. Case 362: How Watson Learned The Trick ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1909\. Poor John. After the 'loss' of his son Ivan, he gets the sort of curveball that only he could be on the receiving end of. Except in this case the delivery will be passing on to strike the man who he loves above all else – and there is absolutely nothing that he can do to stop it.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

Lord above, how the blazes had I gotten myself into this mess?

I looked back up at the small Park Lane flat from which I had just come, and felt the bulge of the documents that I had just been given in my coat pocket. My poor, poor Sherlock.

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This whole sorry saga had started three days ago when, at my friend Sir Peter Greenwood's request I had left our cottage and travelled across country to Wiltshire and the home of Sherlock's 'other family' the Hawkes. His half-nephew Lord Harry Hawke's wife Alice had recently passed but that was the least of the fellow's problems. All three of his sons had come down with some unspecified illness which, while not apparently life-threatening (yet) had denied all my clever friend's attempts to drive it back. The fifteen-year-old twins Tobias and Trelawney and their eight-year-old brother Harry might well be the last of the Hawkes if they did not survive to have children. It was all very bad.

What made it worse was the letter that my friend had sent to me, marked 'Confidential: Patient's Records'. They had indeed been inside, but there had been a note from Peter telling me to make sure that I did not bring Sherlock with me. Considering how well they got on with each other I found this worrying but given my love's susceptibility to catching anything going I had been able to persuade him to let me go alone, although I missed him terribly. I was really worried about that note, though. It was so unlike Peter.

I had examined all three boys myself but had not been able to make hide nor hair as to what was wrong with them. It was curious, I thought, that Lord Harry's two daughters had not caught whatever it was and I also quickly sensed that Peter had something to say to me that he did not want our host to overhear. But it was not until we took a walk around the estate before dinner that he unburdened himself to me. And then some!

“This is dashed awkward, John”, he said. “We have been friends since the year dot, but I have to ask you a really painful question.”

I looked at him in surprise. He usually had a frank and open manner when dealing with difficult subjects, which was why he was so popular with his patients. Yet now he looked decidedly unsure of himself.

“Go on”, I said warily.

“You remember you told me about Sherlock and that Lady Amelia Dundas?” he said.

“She passed last year”, I said. “They had a son, George, but he died when he was five. Scarlet fever.”

“I know”, he said, blushing deeply for some reason. “You see, I wondered....”

He hesitated, seemingly finding the ground underneath his boots fascinating. This was really unlike him.

“Were there any others?”

 _What?”_

That was probably too loud even for the Wiltshire countryside. He looked visibly embarrassed.

“Look John”, he said, sounding desperate, “I think I know what this thing is that the boys have got, and if I am right it is at least treatable. But if I go blundering in there and tell poor Harry then all hell is going to break loose for everyone – _including you and Sherlock.”_

I stared at him in bewilderment.

“I know that they are family”, he said, “but why do you make it sound that bad?”

“Because it is”, he sighed. “Insufficient Separation Syndrome.”

It took me a moment to process that, but when I did it seemed impossible. That rare malady, known colloquially as Royal Bed Disease, sometimes struck the sons of families who had intermarried too closely, such as first cousins marrying each other. But how..... oh no. _No!_

“I am so, so sorry”, he said glumly. “You have no idea how much I wanted this to be something – anything! – else. I looked up George Dundas when I had my first suspicions. He and the late Lady Alice had the same birthday – _in the same year and in the same hospital in South Africa!_ Your Mrs. Zeuson worked her magic for me and confirmed it. Lady Amelia Dundas had _twins_ with Sherlock then hid her daughter out in South Africa somewhere, and lied to your friend when he found out the truth about their son. It must have been done that way because otherwise Mrs. Zeuson would surely have learned the truth.”

I tried to process this sudden and impossible turn of events. If he was right then Sherlock had had a son _and_ a daughter, and by one of those twists of Fate that seemed to bedevil us throughout our lives, that daughter had contrived to marry Lord Harry Hawke, her first cousin and Sherlock's half-nephew. Ye Gods, it was worse than something even Sherlock's mother could have come up with!

All right, maybe that was pushing it. But it was not far short!

“At least it can be treated”, I said grasping for the one good thing in this mess.

“The disease can”, he said. “The social ramifications are something else; poor Harry will be blown away. He and his late wife had drifted apart – none of their children had liked her if truth be told – but this takes the whole damn biscuit factory!”

“Does Mrs. Zeuson have cast-iron proof of this?” I asked hopefully.

“Not yet”, he said, “but she knows who does. A lady called Miss Eleanor Clerihew, the late Lady Hawke's companion. She is staying on at the Park Lane flat until it it sold; Harry has promised to find a place for her before that happens.”

“He is a good man and does not deserve this”, I sighed, thinking that families really had a lot to answer for at times. “Poor Sherlock. He has got used to things as they are and now a whole new set of complications.”

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Hence my position today, standing outside the late Lady Hawke's London flat with a sheaf of notes from her companion Miss Eleanor Clerihew. The lady had been quiet but determined, and had explained that as per usual my worst fears were indeed one hundred per cent accurate. She had been handed the documents by the late Lady Alice but had been ordered not to hand them over or even reveal their existence until she herself was assured of a new place. Fortunately when I mentioned my link to Sherlock the lady softened her opposition and agreed to let me have the documents. 

All right, she had asked if he himself was coming and she had quite clearly been gearing up for a simper just in case. Some things never changed!

I wired Peter straight away so that he could begin treatment. As he had said the malady was fairly easy to cure although those boys and young men who went through it often had fewer children than normal. I could only hope that the Hawke lineage would continue despite all this.

What a mess!

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Explaining this whole saga to Lord Harry and his two elder sons was painful, but it had to be done. The nobleman sighed when I was done and looked hard at me.

“So that leaves one more person to tell”, he said heavily. “Would you like to break this to him alone, doctor?”

“We would like to be there too”, young Trelawney Hawke suddenly spoke up. “Doctor, this is our grandfather who does not even know that we are his grandsons. Grandsons that he must have thought he could never have.”

Lord Harry sniffed.

“I fear that too many of us would overwhelm the fellow”, he said, smiling at his sons. “You are yet young, boys, and hard as it may be to believe, even grown men find some things difficult.”

“We have just acquired a new and very clever grandparent”, Lord Tobias said roundly. “But of course we will respect your decision, sir.”

And incredibly both he and his twin were giving their father what was indubitably Sherlock's 'bacon look'. They were his blood all right!

I supposed that it was going to have to be one traumatic event rather than two. Rip the plaster off in one go, as they say, and never mind the pain.

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I could see Sherlock's surprise when I returned a few days later with Lord Harry and his twins, although he made them all welcome and asked after their health. He must have known from their guarded responses that something was amiss, and I sighed as I prepared to explain that his second family had just got even closer to him. I had contacted Mr. Tudor at Swordland's over the past few days on the off-chance that somehow all this was a horrible mistake, but he had been able to confirm that the worst as ever was true. It really would have been nice to have been proven wrong for once.

I handed Sherlock Lady Alice Hawke's death certificate and he looked at me in confusion.

“Am I supposed to deduce something from this?” he asked.

“Look at the date and place of birth”, I prompted.

He got it in under a second, as I had known he would. That date, the one that he had always assumed was only of his son's birth, was now that of his daughter. His late daughter.

Sherlock took a deep breath and looked at Lord Hawke.

 _“You_ married my daughter?” he said quietly. The nobleman nodded.

“She always kept her past quiet, sir”, he said softly, as if he was afraid that speaking loudly might spook my friend. “I only knew that she came from southern Africa and was raised there by some people called Smith. I never thought...”

He trailed off, looking cautiously at what was now his father-in-law. 

“The boys had something that only happens when close cousins marry”, I explained. “Peter suspected, and asked for me.”

Lord Tobias nudged his twin, and they both advanced to kneel before my friend.

“That means that you are our grandfather, sir”, the elder boy said politely. “May we be greatly honoured, and be permitted to address you as such?”

For a brief moment his words hung in the air and I could feel myself holding my breath. Then Sherlock broke, pulling both boys to him and sobbing his agreement. He had grandchildren, and like me his bloodline would continue after he was gone. What more could any man want?

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All right, apart from an evening of manly embracing.

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Make that a full week.

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	19. Interlude: TNG

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1909\. Sherlock meets The Next Generation – his own grandsons! There may just be the odd emotion or seven.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I had grandchildren! Five of the things!

Thanks to my wonderful John who had broken the shocking news to me as gently as he could, I now had five of the things and my half-nephew (also I supposed now my son-in-law) Lord Harry Hawke invited John and I to Brunton Hall for a family get-together. Never have there been so many emotions in one place, I was sure!

I had made sure to write to John's friend Sir Peter Greenwood thanking him for his help in this (John had implied that the baronet had felt awkward at having stumbled into the mess that was my family), and my only sad thought was that while I had offspring, my beloved was at least partly cut off from his own son by the treachery of That Dratted Woman who had claimed the title of the boy's mother but had signally failed to act as such. But John was clearly very happy for me so I put aside my concerns for now and enjoyed what I – what we had. For when young Trelawney Hawke told my beloved that he regarded him as a grandfather too, John barely held it together.

Being John, it was of course a _manly_ sniff.

And thereafter I received regular letters from my new grandsons as to how they were doing in school, which may have made even me sniff. Though not as manfully as John, of course.

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	20. Interlude: Polar Opposites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1909\. There is a new museum, a new shop, and a new conquest for Mankind. Sherlock and John are able to help out more of their friends, while at Westminster the political shenanigans continue as ever (see piscine creatures defecating in a marine environment).

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

This was the year that old age pensions first started to be paid and if anyone so much as smirks in this vicinity then..... there may well be Pouting! As well as that achievement there was one and nearly two more; explorer Robert Peary conquered the North Pole while Ernest Shackleton was forced to turn back having got to within barely a hundred miles of the other end of the planet. I could have remarked that the temperatures at either extremity were likely as cold as Sherlock's feet of a morning, but I knew full well that such a quip would have had Severe Consequences. 

Oh boy, it did!

As I have mentioned elsewhere we still received a lot of correspondence through Mrs. Rockland in Baker Street, even five years after our departure. There were of course many appeals for Sherlock to investigate this or that case, but from time to time we had contacts with old friends who asked for help. One such came at the start of this year when the twins Balin and Balan Selkirk, whom we had helped when they had started their hotel on the shores of Lake Windermere, inherited a large plot of land over in the United States from an aunt that they had not even been aware was still alive, only for the whole thing to become entangled in legal problems. Sherlock was able to use his contacts to sort things out for them and they received some handsome proceeds from the sale of the land, part of which they insisted on donating to Sherlock's orphanage.

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For the first time in two years we came to London for a long visit, mainly to see two new establishments; a plush new department store called Selfridge's and the new Victoria & Albert Museum. I had always thought that the museum was one of the greatest Victorian contributions to society, enabling people to learn about different things in peace and tranquillity. That was also the year of the famous (or infamous) People's Budget, the first to levy large taxes on the wealthy. Personally I thought that this was a bad idea, not because it would hit Sherlock's family (many of whom I had little regard for anyway) but because those affected might well depart for another country leaving England worse off than before. I also suspected, correctly as it turned out, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer the wayward Mr. David Lloyd George and his on-off ally the equally unpredictable President of the Board of Trade Mr. Winston Churchill were using it as a way to secure control over the House of Lords for their Liberal government. 

Early that autumn we had another visitor at the cottage. Mr. Henry Templar was the younger brother of our Lancashire friend the then Inspector Josiah Templar, and the younger man (who was very much a carbon-copy of his illustrious brother) was a journalist at the 'Times' newspaper. He had learned that his sibling, who had been widely expected to be promoted to chief-inspector due to a recent retirement at that level, was to be passed over because two people on the selection panel did not like his 'background' (i.e. the colour of his skin). Sherlock was able to apply pressure in the right places and our friend duly won the promotion that he so richly deserved. 

It was good to help good people.

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	21. Interlude: Wings And Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1909\. John is traumatized by new technology but some manly embracing (NOT That Other Thing) soon sorts matters. He also says the wrong thing at the wrong time – twice! – and he is not the only one.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

“I do not see why you are so set against this idea of flying”, said someone who was not getting laid or doing any laying any time soon. “This Aviation Week seems an excellent idea, and they will doubtless offer flights for anyone who wishes to see the earth from on high.”

“I do not wish to see the earth from more than six feet away, thank you very much”, I said not at all frostily. “If God had meant for man to fly then he would have given him wings.”

“I can see the appeal”, Sherlock mused. “Would you object to me going up in.....”

He stopped, belatedly catching my horrified expression. He was besides me in a trice, wrapping two strong arms around me and pulling me close until I had stopped shivering.

“But why would I need the heavens”, he smiled, “when I have you on earth?”

Maybe he was getting laid, or even doing some laying. Very soon!

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At the end of November the House of Lords rejected the controversial People's Budget, paving the way for a general election the following year. Our cottage in Sussex seemed ever more a haven from such political shenanigans.

A couple of weeks later we went to London to meet up with an old friend, Chief-inspector Chatton Smith. He had come to London as part of his recent promotion which had been partly brought about by his solving a particularly sensitive case involving several important people in Cumberland, all of whom were now marking the festive season from behind bars. We met him at my favourite restaurant in Trafalgar Square – their chocolate cake was even better than I had remembered – and Sherlock asked after Mr. Smith's lover Mr. Macdonald.

“As bad as ever!” Mr. Smith smiled. “He passed sixty recently and when Chummy and the boys came round to help celebrate I made the mistake of saying that Fray was getting old. At least I was lucky enough to do it in a Friday; I was still limping when I went back to work on Monday. Oh, and Fray says to say thank you for helping get Fray Junior transfer into Greycoats; the boy was desperate to go there especially after his old school had to close down.”

“The Tartan Threesome?” Sherlock smiled.

“All still in the business”, Mr. Smith said. “Chummy bought them a new and bigger house in Maryport, although they all insist on coming round to 'check up' on Fray and me from time to time. Thank the Lord that we have staff who come in but can be put off for a time; the six of us can have a Naked Day even if Chummy does strut so after he has 'seen to' the boys.”

“Terrible the way that some men strut like that”, I said innocently. Sherlock gave me the sort of look that made it clear he could see right through my sardonicity, and I shuddered most pleasurably.

“Fray is wonderful with his namesake”, our visitor smiled. “He gets all mushy and dewy-eyed when the boy calls him Grandfather, although when I did the same after he had left the other week, I most definitely lived to regret it! He said that real men do not cry, even though he had me in tears. He sprained his ankle last Thursday – yes, because of that – so he could not come with me. I was almost relieved at the rest, until he and Chummy somehow managed to arrange for the boys to all have two days off from the station so that all four or them could all come with me. They are all waiting for me back at the hotel; I can only hope my 'can-do' cousin has taken their edge off, so to speak.”

“Good luck!” I smiled.

“I will need it!” he said fervently.

He doubtless did. So, even sooner, did I!

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	22. Interlude: Crapper, Crippin And Cornishmen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1910\. Edwardian frolics give way to Georgian gravity, but the political situation continues to be a mess. There is a flood of perhaps not Biblical although still noteworthy proportions, a murderer flees but gets caught, and John has to 'talk' Sherlock our of a bad idea.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

The general election in January of that year solved nothing; the Liberals lost over a hundred seats but clung on to power with the support of the Irish parties. Thus Mr. Asquith remained as prime minister and was still determined to force through the Parliament Act, giving the lower house supremacy in all matters. The king then promised to create enough new peers to change the balance of the Upper House and the Lords had to withdraw their opposition. Even the death that May of 'Edward the Caresser' – without whom to be fair we might well not have secured our _entente_ with the French – did not change things as his son and successor George the Fifth made it clear that he too would back the change.

That year was also marked by two departures. Sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper, famed for his development of the toilet, died. And after one of the famous murder trials of the age, Doctor Hawley Crippin who had murdered his wife and later fled the country only to be arrested with the aid of the wireless telegraph, was hung. A good riddance in the latter's case.

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We were as I said very much left to our own devices by the villagers among whom we had settled, my tending to their medical needs and their very much not noticing when I may have on the very odd occasion have arrived into the village in less than perfect order (and that had better damn well not be another smirk from 'someone'!). That spring however the little Blind Reach, the stream which ran through the village and forded the road going north, was swollen by late March rains and flooded several houses. Sherlock stepped in and ensured that the local council actually moved at a decent speed for once in sorting matters, and we paid jointly for the dredging of the stream so that any further flooding was much less likely. As Sherlock rightly said, what good is money if it does no good?

In June we were unfortunate enough to have more dealings with my least favourite Cornish ex-fisherman of all time, Mr. Laurence Trevelyan, of whom I was not the least bit jealous whatever anyone smirked... said. He had asked Sherlock if he could arrange for him and his silent brother Blaze to attend the opening of the new cathedral in Truro down in their native Cornwall and, despite the event being all sold out, Sherlock had duly gotten them in. Then some teasing bastard had suggested that he might invite the ogling rogue _and_ his Italian stallion lovers down to see us in the cottage! I had had to fuck him long and hard for the best part of a whole day in order to talk him out of it.

What was left of me the next day did wonder; he could surely not have been so devious as to.... could he have?

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	23. Interlude: Come The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1910\. The dynamic duo visit the capital again for a memorable experience, John's fears of flying prove all too accurate and, miracle of miracles, he actually manages to say No to Sherlock!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.(retired)]_

That summer Mr. Charles Rolls† made the first double-crossing of the English Channel. I remember shuddering when I read that at the mere mention of height, but fortunately some manly embracing soon sorted matters. My fears were proven all too right when Mr. Rolls died not long after in a fall from his plane when his rudder broke at a height of some eighty feet.

Sherlock and I had cause to visit the capital yet again that August when his sister fell ill. I was horrified to see that some of the trusty old horse-drawn omnibuses had been replaced by new petrol-driven vehicles, which emitted all sorts of noxious fumes as they chugged along barely any faster than what they had replaced (although I suppose that arguably that was better than the 'political promises' that their predecessors left in the road!) . My annoyance at least made Mrs. Thompson laugh and I am pleased to say that she soon recovered.

Of course my bastard of a lover insisted that I go on one of the new vehicles before we returned to the blessed safety and sanctity of the cottage. It was a horrendous experience that I never wished to repeat again, although he soothed my ruffled feathers with a private compartment all the way back to Sussex and a 'ride' that left me having to sit down at Berwick Station for some time before I could make the great trek out to the cab in the station-yard. 

I was sure that I caught the station staff exchanging money as we left. I considered glaring at them but it would have taken too much effort.

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Sherlock was trying his best pleading look on me. Normally I was putty in his hands over most (all right, almost all) things, but this was my professional reputation. I put my foot down.

“No”, I said firmly. “No teasing your big brother just because one of his games with Danny ended a tad prematurely.”

“But John......” he said plaintively.

“Carl is sixty-two years old so deserves some peace and quiet”, I said. “He cannot have that if you are going to make fun of the fact that he pulled a muscle trying to keep up with a lover still in his thirties.”

He pouted again when he saw that I was not going to change my mind.

“I suppose that one must respect the _older_ generation”, he said.

I looked at him sharply. He hardly ever drew attention to the very short and almost infinitesimally tiny advantage in years that I had on him. If he started now, I would make him regret it later.

I had to be losing my mind! When did Sherlock Holmes ever regret sex?

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_Notes:_   
_† He had with his associate Mr. Henry Royce founded the famous luxury car-manufacturer in 1904. This lasted until it was purchased by the government in 1971 who quite impressively managed not to crash it until 1987. The car-name was licensed to BMW in 1998._

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	24. Interlude: Wedding Bells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1911\. A scheduling clash only adds to John's problems, as he has to put on a brave face and hide his inner turmoil.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

The year started with one of those strange coincidences, when we both received wedding invitations for both of us to attend different weddings on the same day. John's son Ivan was getting married to a lady that he had been courting for at least a year while my grandson Trelawney Hawke was also tying the knot with, unfortunately in his case with one Miss Samantha Bexley. Naturally I had had our friend Mr. Edward 'Ginger' Tudor check out both ladies and while Miss Gower was a charming creature, Miss Bexley was …. regrettably still breathing. 

“Ivan has invited us to his and Anne's wedding”, John sighed sadly. “I do not want to go.”

“But you should”, I pressed. “I know that he is unaware of the fact, but he is your son and you did help save him a few years back. And he knows you as one of his great supporters. He would think it odd if you were not there.”

I knew the unspoken truth behind what he was saying. The likelihood that there would soon be Watson grandsons running around – except unlike my own they would never know their grandfather, while my grandson's wedding might soon produce great-grandsons for me. Life was unfair at times.

“I wish that you could come with me”, he smiled. “But Trelawney is your grandson and a most excellent young man. You have to be there for him.”

I smiled innocently.

“I wonder how _you_ would look splayed out in a wedding-dress....”

“Sherlock!”

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In the end John went to his son's wedding and thankfully it was not as bad an ordeal as he had feared. But he still resented having yet not having a son, and there was nothing that even I could do about that.

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	25. Interlude: Coronations And Cuckoldry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1911\. The Malones have finally got what they wanted (six times over), and there is a death in the Holmes family which leads to all sorts of complications. Meanwhile poor John has more of the sort of family problems that not even Sherlock can help him with.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

That summer England was ablaze with colour as the country marked the coronation of our new monarch. There was I thought, something almost desperate in the people’s urge to celebrate while they could; after the Tangiers and Bosnian Crises the Germans had once again been forced to back away from Morocco because the British had stood by their French allies. But our luck could not hold for ever, hence the urge to party like it was still the nineteenth century. 

On this particular day we had exchanged the countryside for the seaside, paying a surprise visit to the Malones in Eastbourne. The little resort was like our own Chuffingden bedecked in red, white and blue and several roads had been closed off for street parties. I smiled both at that and the frankly frazzled looks on the faces of the elderly couple.

“It was good to see that Jo and Kit are all right”, Sherlock observed politely.

Our former landlady gave him a dirty look; we had timed our visit to overlap that of the Rocklands and their six children. Yes, _six_ children. I remember our last year in Baker Street and the 'Marseilles' case when our former landlady had been despairing of ever becoming a great-aunt, but shortly after that her nephew had finally got his finger (or something) out and her niece had been popping out little Rocklands on a regular basis ever since. Naming the first two Charles and Violet had been a smart move for the father which was probably why he was allowed to keep the appendages that had enabled him to have more. The others had been Elizabeth (Mrs. Rockland's late mother), William (Mrs. Malone's ill-starred first husband), Peter (Mr. Rockland's father) and rather bizarrely, Red (Mr. Malone’s friend back in the United States).

“One child exhausted me”, Mrs. Rockland sighed. “Having six of the little blighters here at once…. It makes me really feel my age.”

“John is sixty next year”, chirped a certain blue-eyed genius who wasn’t getting lucky that evening. I glared at him.

“I thought that you would both find retirement a lot more difficult”, Mr. Malone observed. “Get yourself dragged back every time there was a suspicious death or a political crisis in the offing.”

“I made it clear that fifty was as far as I was prepared to go”, Sherlock said firmly. “Apart from two small familiar matters and, of course, a certain affair involving laundry items, I have kept to that.”

I looked at him In horror as the elderly couple both leaned forward, clearly agog.

“ _Do_ tell!” Mrs. Malone grinned. 

The bastard wasn't getting lucky all week now!

He gave me a pointed look.

Probably?

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“Something is bothering you”, I said as walked along the sea-front later that day. We were to spend the night at a hotel in the town, Rensselaer having been fully booked, and then most of the next day with the Malones so there was no hurry. “Is it to do with your father’s passing?”

Sir Edward Holmes had died the month before and Sherlock had found the funeral particularly painful. Worse, the baronet's will had only added fuel to the fire. The entire Holmes wealth was to be run by a trust for the remainder of Lady Holmes's life with an income for her, and once she passed it was to split into seven parts. Six were to be run by and for Carlyon, Guilford, Randall, Sherlock their sister Anna and Mr. Lucifer Garrick, while the seventh would be split equally between Mycroft Holmes, four of his five daughters (even Lady Holmes had finally had enough of the impossible Charlotte) and Tantalus Holmes.

Despite his dreadful behaviour over the years Mr. Mycroft Holmes had somehow convinced himself that he should still have inherited everything, so after getting barely two per cent of the estate there had all too inevitably been an argument and Sherlock had returned ruffled and upset. I had had to let him have his way with me for twenty-four hours to make him feel better. Honestly, the things that I put up with for that man!

“The telegram that came before we left this morning was from Carl”, he said, trying to pat down his impossible hair. “Or from Danny; he says what is left of my elder brother cannot hold a pen just now, the bad boy! They say that Mycroft did take legal advice on challenging the will but was told that he was certain to fail.”

I wondered when my limbs were going to forgive me and start working again.

“That is good, is it not?” I asked thinking that a day in bed might have its upsides. Provided that I did not have to do anything complicated like moving.

“Luke spoke to me about something else”, he said, looking at me rather oddly. “He had a message for me from Ginger, concerning your niece Emma-Jane.”

I sighed unhappily. Three years ago my nephew and Stevie's eldest Jack had married one Miss Emma-Jane Garvett whom Sherlock had immediately categorized as a ‘First-Class With Honours Complete Airhead’, an appellation with which I had soon been forced to agree (even the saintly Hetty had confided to us her opinion that if we stood close enough to her daughter-in-law we could probably hear the sea!). It had soon become clear that Emma-Jane and her husband were ill-matched and that she would and did flirt (and sleep) with just about any available male. She had even succeeded in wrangling an introduction to our lecherous late king which had only been scuppered when that monarch had shuffled off this mortal coil just days before she had been due to meet him. He had been lucky so to do!

“She has been openly seeing a Hungarian businessman”, Sherlock said slowly, “which is why she had drawn my brother’s attention. I am sorry John, but it has been going on for some little time. It may be even that the child she is now carrying…..”

He tailed off. Poor Jack. My nephew always came over as someone who was so bright and breezy but I knew that he did truly love his flibbertigibbet of a wife, and that this would hurt him greatly.

“The relationship with Mr. Budar is all but over”, Sherlock reassured me, “as the fellow in question is returning to his home country very soon. But your niece – a leopard does not change its spots, as they say.”

I sighed unhappily.

“Come on”, he said, “and we shall see if I can take you away from all your worries.”

“That would be difficult”, I said heavily.

He was suddenly right next to me.

“I am wearing your favourite panties!” he whispered in my ear.

My limbs moaned in unison. But at least one part of me was suddenly very happy!

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	26. Interlude: Temporary Amnesia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1911\. Sherlock 'forgets his keys', the duo meet up again with an even more exhausted Mr. Bronn Blackwater, and John becomes a grandfather – but he will likely never know his grandson as such.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

The cottage needed repair work done to its walls so that September we took the opportunity for a short stay in a private hotel not far from a station on the Great Northern main line near London, where we planned to meet up with some old friends of ours. Mr. Bronn Blackwater had brought his friends Mr. Dayne and Mr. Lannister down to mark their fortieth birthdays which occurred within a few days of each other. We had expected to see our friend in somewhat better state that the last time we had met as we knew his two charges' 'heats' were supposed to wind down by the time they reached forty. But when we met him at our hotel, it seemed that they had not wound down _that_ much.

“Poor Bronn”, Mr. Lannister sighed. “Your invitation caught us just at the end of our heats, and it was the second time we had decided to stay in rather than go to a nearby town or village. We had to virtually carry him to the station; he was so grateful to you springing for a sleeper car that he slept the whole way down.”

I looked hard at Mr. Lannister, who blushed.

“Maybe not all the way”, Mr. Dayne admitted, also blushing for reasons I could well guess. “Bronn, love?”

Mr. Lannister nudged Mr. Blackwater who blearily opened his eyes and looked blearily at us both.

“You”, he grumbled, “have a lot...... to answer for!”

I sniggered. He was clearly not that annoyed, especially when Mr. Lannister, pulled him upright into a manly embrace and Mr. Dayne crossed to sit with them.

Mr. Blackwater was asleep again before we left. Only briefly though, judging from the pleasured moan that we heard through the hotel door!

“I think that I forgot my keys”, Sherlock said brightly.

I gave him such a look!

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There was one more event of note that year and it was what had I both hoped for and yet feared. In December my son Ivan's marriage to Miss Anne Gower produced a son whom he named Luke after his maternal grandfather. I too was now a grandfather, but my offspring would never know me.

Life was really unfair at times.

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	27. Case 363: The Adventure Of The Airborne Assassin ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1911\. With the shadow of war growing ever longer, ruling the waves may no longer be enough to keep Britannia safe. Sherlock and John agree to leave Chuffingden and travel to the air-base at Northolt, Middlesex, to investigate strange goings-on around the experimental mail flights between there and Windsor – is flying more dangerous than even John supposes?

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

_'Those magnificent men in their flying machines,_   
_they go up tiddly up up,_   
_they go down tiddly down down._   
_They enchant all the ladies and steal all the scenes,_   
_with their up tiddly up up,_   
_and their down tiddly down down.'_

Two years before the events I am about to describe took place, there was a milestone in human achievement which, while estimable in itself, shook our Nation greatly. Frenchman Louis Blériot made the first powered flight across the English Channel, and the 'Times' put it well when they remarked that England was no longer an island, and that for Britannia's safety she would in future have to rule the skies as well as the waves. Early aeroplanes were flimsy things and accidents were commonplace, but one only had to look at the contrast between the likes of Stephenson's 'Rocket', bowling along the tracks at a top speed of thirty miles an hour with a few open-topped 'coaches' against the express locomotives of less than a century later which could haul far heavier trains at over three times that speed. Better aeroplanes would surely come and soon – then what?

As part of the Coronation celebrations that year, the General Post Office was running a trial air-mail service between the new air-base at Northolt in Middlesex, some miles west of London, and the Postmaster General's house at Windsor in Berkshire, about twelve miles as the crow flies. It had started on the ninth of September and the first flight had been managed in an impressive eighteen minutes. I had found it interesting but had not of course remarked upon it to my beloved, knowing how the mere thought of height made him nauseous. Besides that had been only a week after my fifty-ninth birthday and we were both.... let us say that we were not getting any younger.

I still did not strut, whatever John said!

Unfortunately for my love's rabid acrophobia we were destined to see rather more of the new technology than he would have hoped. Barely days into the flights and my cousin Luke had been asked to look into 'something strange'. Said soon to be ex-relative sent me a couriered letter pleading for me to step in as he, Benji, Carl and Danny had gone for a week in the country and Luke had 'had an accident that he really did not wish to have to explain to his superiors'. Even without Benji's 'he slipped when getting up too soon after getting up' I could visualize what had happened. Much as I did not want to!

If I mentioned how lucky my relatives were with their randy younger lovers and that we really should have Benji and Danny down to the cottage one day, then I enjoyed John's desperate efforts to try to 'persuade' me out of it! He may have been panting like Stephenson's 'Rocket' afterwards, but of course I was too kind to remark on it. I did not even smirk. 

I did not smirk _much._

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The experimental air-service was being flown by a number of pilots, some of them quite famous (not that I would have recognized any of them). Luke's notes (his handwriting was terrible and even without the unhelpful illustrations in the margin I could all too well imagine what Benji had been doing to him when he had been writing, the horny bastard!). My cousin suggested that I might look closely at Mr. Henry Battenberg†, a distant cousin of the Royal Family who was quite a good pilot but, Luke thought, a shade too pro-German especially given the current political climate. 

Our guide round the air-base was Captain John Henderson, a dashing blond fellow of about twenty-five years of age who was the archetypal British soldier. He was it turned out a pilot himself but had not applied to fly the new service.

“To be honest sir, I do not quite trust that French plane”, he admitted, “although that may be just because I do not trust the French, full stop! When the call went round for pilots over fifty men applied, so I knew that with my limited flight time I had no chance. But I enjoy managing this end of things, and my family is involved with our Nation's attempt to design and produce something that will fly the Frogs out of our skies.”

I smiled to myself at his patriotism.

“Do you see the pilots off on each flight?” I asked.

“No, that is someone else's job”, he said. “They are a good bunch, although what with all this anti-German feeling there was some muttering against poor Hal because of that African rigmarole earlier this year. Stuff and nonsense in my opinion; we are all Germanic if you go back to our Anglo-Saxon forbears and no man can help his family.”

John coughed for no apparent reason. I glared at him. That had better not have been any form of snark or he would be paying for it back at the hotel, sexagenarian or not.

“May we see this aeroplane?” I asked.

“I shall get Tompkins to show you it”, he said.

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The Blériot XI‡ looked pathetically fragile, as if a gust of wind might reduce it to the pile of matchwood that it had seemingly been created out of. Barely eight yards long with a similar length wingspan, it was an odd thought that the express railway locomotives of today could still go twice its top speed of less than fifty miles per hour. Although of course the plane did have certain advantages, and I wondered just how long it would be before they were soaring round the world and changing Mankind much as the railway had done at its advent.

John very visibly did not want to go near the thing, and hung back to talk to a young mechanic there. A surprisingly young mechanic, I thought; the boy had to be fourteen years of age if that. My friend was visibly relieved when I said that I was done and we adjourned to our hotel.

“Who was the young fellow that you were talking to?” I asked.

“A Master James Bigglesworth”, he said. “His father is from Yorkshire but he has some connection here so got the boy in. He is as keen on planes as you are on bacon!”

I shook my head at him. It was a complete coincidence that we had got a hotel which served excellent breakfasts. I owed Luke for that at least so I might not send Benji that extra-large box of 'supplies' after all. Or I might be generous and settle for just the large box.

“As you are on chocolate”, I countered. “We shall stop and pick a bar up on our way back.”

“Great!” he beamed.

“Then you will eat it naked while I make you achieve sexual release as often as possible!”

I smiled as I left him standing there, gobsmacked. I still had it, and so soon would he!

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It was the following morning and I was enjoying a light breakfast – only eight rashers of bacon – when John limped down to join me.

“I am getting too old for this!” he groaned, sitting down very slowly on the chair across from me. I called a waiter over and ordered him his breakfast, then poured him a coffee as he looked incapable of managing that great task for himself. He yawned far too adorably, and had there not been bacon in the immediate vicinity then that would have had Immediate Consequences.

“Something else young Master Bigglesworth said yesterday was important”, he said, shuddering as I sent him a lustful look, “but 'someone' did not give me time to get it out yesterday.”

“I had plenty of time to get it out!” I quipped, looking at him intently. “I still do, come to that!”

He gulped and spoke appreciably faster.

“He told me that someone had changed the roster for the rest of the month”, he said, wincing as he lifted his coffee to his lips. “That normally happens only when one of the pilots request it, he said, and he was worried that that German fellow had been moved to the twenty-fifth.”

“Why did he think that that was significant?” I asked.

“The pilots normally fly straight to the landing-area by the Postmaster-General's house in Windsor”, he said. “But His Majesty is hosting a garden-party that day and the pilot has been asked to fly over so he can give the great and the good something to gawp at.”

He really was most disrespectful to his elders and betters. He clearly needed more.... instruction. And once I had had my bacon, he got it. 

Three times!

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Unfortunately, it seemed that the gods of luck were not to be on our side. Mr. Battenberg's flight on the twenty-fifth was due to take off at ten o' clock so we had arranged to leave our hotel at a little before nine to be there in case anything happened. But the previous night had seen a tremendous storm sweep through Middlesex and although the day itself dawned bright and sunny, the single road leading up to our hotel was under nearly three foot of water. The only way out was a half-mile walk to a deserted road north of the place from where we had a further half-mile into the nearest village before we could find a cab to take us to the air-base. 

It was only a few minutes past ten when we arrived and I was relieved as we approached that there was no sight of an aeroplane, which I surely would have been able to hear had it taken off on time. Rather than go to Captain Henderson's office we went straight to the hangar where we found...

_Mr. Henry Battenberg?_

I recognized the young pilot from the photograph that Luke had sent me. He was battered and bruised, but alive and recovering with the help of young Master Bigglesworth.

“What happened?” I asked anxiously.

The boy sighed heavily.

“Captain Henderson attacked him.”

We both stared at him incredulously.

“Why?” John asked at last.

“Because he wanted to fly the plane into the king's garden-party”, the boy said, as if it were somehow obvious. “He is a German agent, after all.”

That clearly shocked even the recovering Mr. Battenberg, who yelped in pain as he sat up rather too fast and stared at the boy standing over him.

“The captain?” he demanded. “A traitor?”

“I looked it up”, Master Bigglesworth said calmly. “His grandfather was German; they changed the family name from Holstein when he came to England. It had to be him.”

“How did you know that?” I challenged.

“I asked Kent, the chap in charge of the rosters, and he told me that it was the captain who had changed them”, he said. “He has flown off to try to kill the king. Even when he fails, the publicity will be awful and the damage to the British flight programme serious.”

“We have to stop him!” John said quickly. “We must send a telegram.”

The boy shook his head.

“You can if you wish”, he said, “but there is no need.”

“Why not?” Mr. Battenberg asked.

“I cut his fuel-line”, the boy said, “and loosened four of his wires. Once he reaches flying altitude the plane will fall apart. He took off about ten minutes ago – he came early of course – so he should be down by now. I thought I heard an explosion in the distance a couple of minutes back, but I was not sure.”

The calm, collected way in which he said that would have been chilling, yet his eyes bore the same righteousness of character that my half-nephew and son-in-law Lord Hawke had, and that he had passed on to all three of his sons, my wonderful grandsons. Like me this boy had chosen justice before the law.

He looked at me and nodded.

“I shall be a pilot some day”, he said, his voice suddenly taking on an almost dream-like quality. “To fly free, to serve my country, to do what is right – like you and the doctor sir, it is all I want. One day I shall have it.”

I had absolutely no doubt that one day, he would

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Postscriptum: One day very soon, he did. Mr. James Bigglesworth became arguably Great Britain's most famous fighter ace in the Great War, which against all the odds he somehow survived. The last flight of Captain Henderson, whose plane and body were found not far from Heath Row where we had assisted Queen Molly's niece Miss Ferrers, brought an end to the experimental air-service, but the massively improved planes that emerged from the Great War led to its resumption once that terrible conflict was over. Even if John still shudders at the idea of flying.

Master Bigglesworth shook his head at me when we left the air-base for the last time, which was odd. The boy was smart but there was no way that he could have known about that pilot's uniform that I had purloined for 'research purposes'.

_Was there?_

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_Notes:_   
_† A fictional character, but this was the name of some cousins of the Queen-Empress. Like the Royal Family they were 'Anglicized' during the Great War, translating to become Mountbattens. In 1947 one of them, a Greek prince called Philip, would marry the future Queen Elizabeth the Second; they are third cousins through Queen Victoria._   
_‡ Nine of this important design survive as of 2020, three of which are airworthy including number 14 in the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, Bedfordshire. This is the oldest aircraft still flying in the world._

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	28. Interlude: Upgrade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1912\. Few things are free in this world – so why should a fellow turn down something that is?

_[Narration by Mr. Fairdale Hobbs, Esquire]_

_I had had over a decade in Northumberland, deliriously happy with the wonderful Levi who I so did not deserve. My late cousin could have left me not a penny of the estate for in my beautiful man he had given me everything that I could have ever wanted. It was fortunate that our house at Staward was so isolated which meant that we did not have to worry about what the neighbours thought, as only the stationmaster's house was anywhere near our own and he was kept busy with his work._

_However all good things must come to an end, and by last year it was clear that the income from the estate was falling. Hence Levi and I decided to sell it and make a new life for ourselves in the United States. This meant of course that we came through London and I decided to call in at Baker Street, although I knew that our friends and my former neighbours Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson had long departed for their cottage somewhere abroad. However we were welcomed by the landlady Mrs. Rockland who told us that they had in fact decamped to a small cottage in Sussex, and that we were among the very small few who could be trusted with that information. I felt honoured to be to treated, and even Levi sniffed before taking me back to our hotel and working out his emotions on and in me._

_I was so damn lucky!_

__

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Some time later when I could walk again we took a train down to Southampton where we had planned to take the 'Celtic' to our new life in the United States. I had fears that we might not make it as that winter there had been a coal strike in England, and I knew that many ships were laid up so there was likely a huge backlog of passengers and freight. The strike had finished two days before we left London but it would surely take some days for coal stocks to be built up again, and I very much feared that a smaller ship like the 'Celtic' would be one of the casualties.

When we went to the White Star Line offices to collect our tickets we were told that the 'Celtic's sailing had indeed been cancelled (although they used the phrase 'suspended'). I was sure that the fact I had Levi towering over me and looking somewhat hungrily at the gentleman sorting the tickets was why he very quickly offered us a free upgrade to their new ship which was making its maiden voyage in two days' time, the mighty 'Titanic'. I expected my love to jump at the chance but to my surprise he seemed unsure, so I said that we would think about it and come back to let them know the next day. There were no other sailings any time soon and I felt sorry for all those poor sailors who would be getting no pay through no fault of their own.

Which was why the telegram that was delivered later that day came as something of a surprise. Having just been told that our friends were still in England, I was confused to receive a message signed 'S. Holmes' from a place called Lincoln, Nebraska in the United States. That state was, if I remembered correctly, one of the middle states, so nowhere near Tennessee where we were heading. The message was short and to the point; it told me to do what my love wanted.

Levi wanted _not _to go on the 'Titanic'. Very much so.__

__“I cannot believe that someone as big as you would not like a big ship”, I teased him as I sat comfortably on the Levitator later that day._ _

__He shifted slightly, again rendering me temporarily speechless._ _

__“Too big”, he said shortly. “Don't like it, sir.”_ _

__I could sense his unease, so I reached around him and gently kissed him._ _

__“We shall wait for the 'Celtic', then”, I said. “I love you, my big boy.”_ _

__He blushed prettily, and pulled me closer to him. Neither of us could know it but we had just avoided The Grim Reaper thanks to his dislike of the new ship and that telegram, whoever it had come from._ _

____

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	29. Interlude: SOS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1912\. John faces a quandary when he is warned that a family member of his may be about to die. He does nothing – but the means of death shocks the whole world.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

In the year which would see the start of National Insurance to pay for those new pensions for the elderly (and 'someone' can stop smirking right this minute damn him!), our happy lives had seemed set to continue. Even if it took me nearly a full week to recover from the ‘celebrations’ that Sherlock had laid on for my sixtieth birthday at the start of that year and it was the twentieth of January before I went down to the village, only to find out that my ex-friends there had been running a book on how long it would be before I was seen again (the vicar won, but I think that was unfair as he must have had a 'tip' from upstairs). 

With all the concerns over my niece Emma-Jane I was almost blind-sided when February brought an unwelcome development with her brother-in-law, Stevie’s second son Henry. Or as he now apparently wished to be called _Heinrich_ ; the teenager had taken up with a German lady called Angela something-or-other, some six years his senior and a distant relative of King Otto of Bavaria let alone at a time when war with Germany looked more and more certain. Doing something as foolish as that was – poor Stevie had totally flipped! He had rightly disinherited the lad who had appealed to his mother in the certain knowledge that she would side with him, only find that he had been very wrong. The whole affair left a bitter taste in my mouth as I felt that I had all but lost one of my three (official) nephews.

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At the end of March, Sherlock baked me a batch of his heavenly chocolate nut muffins. I was immediately wary; he only usually did those for either special occasions or bad news. There was no special occasion to hand so it had to be the latter.

“Do you remember my twin brother Sherrinford?” he asked.

Of course I did. The psychic cult-leader, the man who had saved my and Sherlock's lives many a time. Sometimes one could not make my life up; I doubted that even Sherlock's mother could....

Now I was just being silly!

“He advised me that a certain chain of events was going to unfold this coming month”, Sherlock said, nodding slightly for some reason, “and that it would unless stopped or diverted end in the death of a family member. Someone from your family.”

“Who?” I asked, wishing for another muffin to at least distract me a little. He handed me one and I started on it eagerly. He let me finish before telling me who it was, and I nodded.

“What do you think?” he asked. 

I was torn. The doctor still in me had always followed the tenet of 'first do no harm' up to and including the act of saving that villain Moriarty's on a London dockside. Even though I had come to regret that, I could not willingly hurt someone unless my own or Sherlock's life was threatened. 

Then again, this was not quite the same.

“We should do nothing”, I said eventually. “What will be, will be.”

I little knew then just how what would be was about to be.

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It was just over two weeks later and after a bright start to the day – for once it had been me leaving my beloved sleeping off a sex coma for which I felt quite proud – I strode(ish) down to the village to collect the morning paper. What with all the good food that Sherlock and I ate, I needed regular exercise.

_Apart from that!_

The village seemed unusually quiet and, rather oddly for that time on a Tuesday, the shop was shut with a rack of newspapers and an honesty box on the wall outside. Puzzled, I deposited my coins and took a newspaper, reading the main headline. Then I froze.

I made it back to the house with impressive speed for someone in their seventh decade of life and burst into the front room to find my love sat on the couch. 

“The 'Titanic'!” I almost shouted. “She has sunk, with most of those on board lost! The ship that they called unsinkable!”†

It only slowly dawned on me that Sherlock was holding a telegram which must have come while I was out. He looked up at me almost mournfully.

“This is from our friend Ginger up in London”, he said. “It seems that among the passengers on the ship was a lady travelling second-class with a 'friend'. Her name was Mrs. Emma-Jane Watson.”

I stared at him in shock. Jack's wife! But then…..

“She was with her lover, an American businessman”, Sherlock said carefully, clearly watching for any reaction from me. “A fellow called Mr. Walter Clinton. She had claimed that he was merely escorting her on a trip to see a friend, but…..”

“Did he survive?” I ground out.

“No”, Sherlock said. “One of the survivors reported that he stayed with him on the ship when they ran out of lifeboat space. Apparently they only had room for about half the number of people they were carrying.”

I shuddered at such a horrible end and almost without realizing it ran over to Sherlock, who wrapped his dressing-gown around us both and held me tight. I shivered, the warmth of my personal human heater for once not enough to keep me warm.

“Poor Jack”, I sighed. “This could finish him.

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It very nearly did. Had he not had a family to support I think that my nephew may have totally despaired of life. Stevie was just as hard hit having effectively lost his second son with Henry’s ‘Germanification’ barely a month before and now seen his eldest son cuckolded and left a widower. At least young Stephen was growing up well; his school reports were outstanding and Hetty had feared that he was so polite and well-behaved, Sherlock had had to have Swordland's look into him to make sure.

Poor Jack took some time to recover, and the most of the rest of 1912 passed quietly as he did so. There was of course an inquiry into the sinking but popular opinion (with which I concurred) was that the whole thing was a whitewash designed to shift blame away from the Board of Trade and their quarter of a century old safety regulations, and onto the crew of the 'Californian' which had followed procedures by turning off its wireless set that fateful night and whose crew had mistaken the flares sent up from the great liner as celebratory ones (it was only after the disaster that the use of flares was firmly restricted to calls for help). Captain Edward Smith, who had ignored several ice-warnings, posted insufficient lookouts and run his ship at full-speed into an ice-field, was not only exonerated but also honoured as a hero for going down with his ship, while little mention was made of the fact that the White Star line had reduced the original plan for thirty-two lifeboats‡ (which could have saved most of the people on board that fateful night had they all been filled) to a meagre sixteen. Hmm.

That year also saw the wettest August on record and still more suffragette attacks that continued to do nothing for their cause. In autumn there was the start of the Balkan Wars in Europe, and it would be from that particular theatre that the war we had avoided thus far would break out two years hence. All in all this was turning into a year to forget.

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_Notes:_   
_† In all fairness and contrary to what many said in later years, the White Star Line never made this claim. It appeared in a magazine for the shipping industry which actually said that ships designed like the great vessel were 'practically unsinkable'. People seemed to have missed that slight but as it turned out rather important adjective._   
_‡ The rules for the number of lifeboats dated from an 1894 Board of Trade ruling that ships over 10,000 tons, then about the largest size afloat, had to carry sixteen of the things. The 'Titanic' at 46,000 tons actually had slightly more than was legally required but only enough for one-third of its full capacity or one-half of those on its first and fateful voyage. The ship's designer, showing more foresight than most people, had secured davits that could hold up to four lifeboats each and had recommended at least two be fitted to each, but the White Star Line had considered that they might spoil the passengers' views!_

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	30. Interlude: Generations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1912\. Money cannot help some situations. Sherlock and John can only watch – for now.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

We both had cause for mixed emotions that November, John received a letter from his son Ivan; he and his wife had just had their second child, a boy, and in respect of he and I having helped his family out, they wondered if I would agree to their naming him John – oh, and would my beloved please be his godfather?

Of course John said yes. Because he was so wonderful.

Just days later I may or may not have become a great-grandfather, possibly or possibly not again. My grandson Trelawney's sluttish wife gave birth to a son whom they called James, but my friend Ginger's research showed it to be almost certain that the boy was not his. I monitored the situation from afar and fretted.

At least that autumn brought an end to the Balkan War, although it would prove to be a temporary one. Tensions across the Continent were rising, and it would only take one idiot with an itchy trigger-finger to set things off. This was one time when fearing the worst looked to be the safest of bets.

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	31. Interlude: Kenal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1912\. Absence does not, for some reason, make the heart grow fonder for some people – and John finds that things can get even worse in some areas.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

It had been two wonderful years since our last dealings with a Cornish ex-fisherman of whom I was not the least bit jealous and that had bloody better well not be a smirk or.... I would not be happy. Now we were in London that November and some horrible bastard insisted on us calling in on him no matter how much I pouted (and I did not pout!).

“So good to see you”, the leering fellow smiled at Sherlock. He was over fifty now but still seemed very much the young Cornish fisherman who had looked far too long at Sherlock's backside back in the Scilly Isles, even if I had still been nearly two decades from asserting ownership of said backside. “Especially with such good timing.”

That was when I began to have a bad feeling.

“Why?” I asked suspiciously.

We were interrupted by one of the molly-men coming in with his takings. He was a strikingly muscular fellow who had to be around forty years of age, massively broad shoulders and absurdly small hips that had to render him absurdly top-heavy. It was fortunate that I was not the jealous sort and that had still better well not be another damn smirk!

“Sorry, Low”, the newcomer said, leering most shamefully even for someone who was wearing what seemed to be about ten per cent of a gentleman's bathing-costume. “Didn't know you had visitors.”

I coughed for no particular reason. Mr. Trevelyan grinned.

“Mr. Holmes, Doctor Watson”, he said. “The only brother of mine that you have not met, Kenal†. He is up from Cornubia for a _long_ weekend.”

The weekend was not the only thing that was long and up, an unhelpful part of my brain supplied. I ground my teeth for no particular reason.

“Your brothers are certainly quite distinctive”, Sherlock smiled. “Perhaps one day you can have a whole family reunion here or in Cornwall. I could help arrange that....”

I glared murderously at him. _Over my dead body – or his more like!_ Honestly, if I did not know it to have been beneath him, I would have suspected some blue-eyed bastard of doing this sort of thing deliberately just so I would fuck him all the way back to the cottage! Harrumph!

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_Notes:_   
_† Derived from the Celtic Cunosaglas, meaning generous chief. Of the other brothers Jago is the Cornish James, Blaze from the Armenian St. Blaise, Hedrek from a word meaning bold and Lowen from a word meaning joyful (I can hear John Watson's eyebrows rising at that!)_

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	32. Case 364: The Brierdene Mystery ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1913\. A practical joker dies and bequeaths his beneficiaries some very strange items indeed. One of them is the lover of a relation of Sherlock’s whom he and John have helped before, so the dynamic duo head back to John's native Northumberland to try to unravel a most puzzling legacy.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

By my reckoning we had had four cases since our retirement (if one included the hilarious Bogus Laundry incident which John always pouts so adorably over when I remind him of it!), so we had three to go. This, in our ninth year of heaven on the Downs, certainly looked like one of them.

John stared into his empty dessert-dish, still hoping after all these years that one day his chocolate cake would somehow reappear there to be enjoyed a second time. He really was even more cute and adorable at times like that, although I would never have uttered either of those words in his presence. The one time I had actually called him cute had resulted in a Pout whose Consequences had caused us to miss the Sunday morning service. 

Nearly the evening one, as well!

“Mr. Bassett-Evans has written to us”, I said. “My half-nephew who we helped out near your home town just before we left Baker Street.”

It had been Miss St. Leger’s ever watchful guard on my various relatives nearly all of whom did not know of their connection to someone so illustrious yet so modest (I said as much to John on the odd occasion, and he always coughed for some strange reason) which had led us back to my love’s native Northumberland. My half-nephew Mr. Brencis Bassett-Evans had been concerned over a team-mate at his rugby club, the scrum-half Mr. Edward 'Ned' Jukes, who he had suspected of lusting after one or other of the team’s handsome props. Except that it had turned out to be the hooker, Mr. Bassett-Evans himself, who had been the target of Mr. Jukes’s affections. I had arranged things such that the truth came out, and had received a very shakily-written letter from my half-nephew thanking me, followed by another a month later when I had been able to arrange for Mr. Jukes to obtain the cottage right next to that of my relative. He had not needed to mention as to how he was unable to sit down most days, though. Few men were _that_ good, myself apart of course.

“Oh”, I said, reading down further. “He says that he has just moved to a place called Brierdene which is in the south of the county”, I said. “Do you know of it?”

“That must be the place where Mr. Jukes’s grandfather lives then”, my love said. “I read about it in the ‘Times’ only the other week. With the growth of Newcastle and the other towns nearby they are building a new line to Seaton Sluice, and Brierdene was on the map as the one intermediate station.”

“Seaton Sluice is not open yet then?” I asked. 

He smiled for some reason.

“They thought the name too common”, he said, “so they are calling it the Collywell Bay branch†.”

“That does not sound much better!” I said. “Our friend says that is is something to do with an inheritance, but he would prefer to discuss it in person if we can come.”

“I can always come!” he grinned.

I gave him a sharp look.

“An interesting boast”, I smiled darkly. “Let us see if you can prove it!”

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The following day saw us take the Special Scotch Express (it would not become the Flying Scotsman until 1924) from King's Cross to Newcastle where we could get a local train to Whitley Bay, from where my half-nephew would collect us. Poor John was in very bad shape; even the padded seats of first-class gave his sorely-abused backside little rest. But then if he would boast like that....

“Stop it!” he grumbled.

I just smiled innocently at him. He was in no shape for further molestation just now, but there was always the journey back.....

He would later claim that it was a _manly_ whimper!

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The carriage outside was indeed being driven by Mr. Bassett-Evans, who I thought looked tired but happy. As I mentioned back in our original case with him, he really did ‘shine’ with the same sort of inner goodness that I had once seen in our fellow half-brother, the ill-starred Lord Tobias. In these darkening times there was it seemed still hope for Mankind.

“I quit after an injury last year”, the giant explained. “Thirty-two is getting on a bit for someone in my position, where we get the worst of it. When Ned had all this blow up he, uh, asked me to come and support him.”

“We are glad that he has someone so close”, I smiled, clearly understanding what he meant. The fellow was about the same height as his lover but in mass he made almost two of the fellow, and even though he had little in the way of looks he had a good heart as had been shown by the way in which he and his team-mates had rallied round to protect a colleague however 'rum' they had thought his actions. “Mr. Jukes said that the matter was quite urgent, so we came here immediately.”

“Thank you for that, sirs”, Mr. Bassett-Evans said. “Poor Ned; it's a family thing.”

His lover had my sympathies at once.

“We shall endeavour to help him in any way that we can”, I promised.

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There was also something of my beloved in Mr. Bassett-Evans, for surely no man could have blushed more when we met Mr. Jukes at Brierdene House and he kissed his lover at once. For the best part of a whole minute! Mr. Bassett-Evans looked set to bolt but somehow his lover was able to place him on the couch and then position himself on the larger man's lap. My half-nephew was still blushing but he looked more than happy with the arrangement.

 _”They_ not here then?” the giant asked.

Mr. Jukes nodded, sighed and turned to us. Despite their similar heights he looked much smaller with the giant’s huge bulk behind and beneath him. He carefully pulled his lover’s arms around him eliciting another fierce blush (and something that sounded suspiciously like a contented sigh) before he began his tale.

“A few weeks back, I had word that my grandfather had died”, he said. “He was.... a strange fellow, all things told. The thing about him was that he loved practical jokes, and that all but cut him off from his two sons as well as making his wife up and leave him after just a few years of marriage. He did not seem to mind though, and he was liked enough in this area. I visited on occasion and we got on well enough, although I always had to endure his terrible pranks and jokes. But they made him happy, so I did.”

“I thought you said that your family was South African in part?” I said. 

“My father married a Boer and went out to live in the Cape”, he said. “It was about the time of the first war with the Boers so as you might imagine the family did not take it well. They were not well matched and when he died not long after having me, my mother was more than happy for me to return to England where I would be raised by my father's sister, Aunt Penny.”

 _And to accept a most handsome pay-off for her 'great forbearance'_ , I thought. I blamed John for my becoming so catty in my middle years.

“Last year my uncle, my father's elder brother Graham, died”, Mr. Jukes went on. “He had always been on at my grandfather to give this place to him before he passed on what with all these new taxes they keep coming up with, or at least to give his own three sons something. Simon, Stuart and Solomon, all in their mid-twenties. Not a brain between them mind, which is why this is all so strange.”

“Please go on”, I said.

“Grandfather left the weirdest will, even for him”, Mr. Jukes said, shifting his position and pulling a still-blushing Mr. Bassett-Evans's other arm around him before kissing his lover's hand. “We met in this room and his solicitor told us that my cousins had a choice. He said that in the room to the left there were three items; an old prayer-book, an old chair and a painting. There was one each for Simon, Stuart and Solomon respectively; they could either inspect them themselves or they could have experts in to look at them before they made their final decision, which had to be within a week.”

“And when they did, they all turned out to be valuable antiques!” John grinned. 

To his and my surprise Mr. Jukes shook his head.

“They turned out to be an old prayer-book, and old chair and a horrible modern painting”, he said. “None of them worth more than five quid!”

We both stared at him in surprise.

“Perhaps that was your grandfather having a final joke?” John offered.

“Perhaps”, Mr. Jukes conceded. “It would have been very like him. The will went on to say that I was entitled to at least ten per cent of the rest of the estate and that each of my cousins now had a choice; they could take one of the items or draw lots if two or more of them went for that option, they could have thirty quid‡ hard cash, or they could take thirty per cent of the estate. I would get any bits of the estate that they did not want, which I thought generous at first until the lawyer gave them a valuation of the estate as it stood at my father's death – pretty much nothing!”

“Nothing?” I asked, surprised. He nodded.

“My grandfather had bled the estate dry in donations to charity in his last few years”, he said. “What with the mortgage and the debts, the solicitor reckons that I will be lucky to get halfway to my cousins' thirty quid once it is all settled.”

I thought for a moment.

“You said that you were on reasonably good terms with your grandfather”, I said eventually. “Do you have a copy of his will?”

“I do”, he smiled. “It is in that writing-desk; the second drawer down on the left. I would be grateful if you could fetch it sir; I am quite comfortable here with my Jumbo!”

I was rapidly becoming of the impression that the saucy young fellow actually enjoyed making the larger man blush like that. I suppressed a smile and went over to the desk, got the will and returned. I read it through carefully then thought again.

“When the solicitor read your grandfather's will”, I said, “did he say or do anything unusual?”

“Not by my grandfather's wide definition of the word!” Mr. Jukes smiled. “He had us in here to read it which I thought a bit odd; there are much larger rooms in this barn of a place. He also insisted on telling us that he was reading it word for word; legal reasons, I suppose.”

I smiled. I was beginning to see how this had been done. The late Mr. William Jukes had been a smart man indeed.

“Do you have keys to the house?” I asked.

Mr. Jukes looked puzzled.

“Yes”, he said. “Why? Do you think there is something hidden somewhere?”

“Not as such”, I smiled. “You will have to yield your comfortable position to see what I think is here, though.”

He looked at me in confusion but rose to his feet, although he elicited another fierce blush from my half-nephew when he kissed him as he pulled him to his feet. I noted that the larger man still stuck close to him as he handed me the keys. Some men were so whipped!

We went out to the main hall, a cavernous place dominated by the huge split staircase ascending to the first floor. I crossed to a door on the right-hand side, opened it and peered inside.

“That is just a store-room, sir”, Mr. Jukes said, clearly puzzled. “The room with the items in it is over the other side.”

I shook my head at him.

“I must doff my hat to your most brilliant late grandfather”, I said. “He told you all where he had hidden his wealth, yet in such a way that none of you heard it.”

“Sir?” Mr. Jukes looked plain confused.

“The exact wording of the will, which I am sure your father's most talented solicitor read as commanded and told you that he was doing the same, was that the room containing the three items set aside for your cousins was, and I quote, 'to the left of my door'”, I said. “You did not mention that when he told you that, you all went out and found that the door with the items behind it had been opened during the reading.”

Mr. Jukes stared at me in shock.

“How did you know that?” he asked. “There was only us the five of us there; I was not even allowed to have my Jumbo!”

'His Jumbo' blushed even more at that, but a kiss from Mr. Jukes seemed to make him happy again.

“Because your grandfather most cleverly misled you”, I smiled, “or at least he misled your cousins. You see, by 'my door' he was referring to the _front_ door of his house and hence his reference meant a door to the left of that as you entered. When you emerged into the hallway from the opposite direction and saw a door open to _your_ left, you naturally assumed that that was where his wealth was, even though if you had stopped to think you might have realized that that door lay to the _right_ of the front door. Which is where he placed his real wealth.”

I fully opened the door and we all looked into an otherwise unimpressive store-room to find exactly what I had known we would find; to wit an old prayer-book, an old chair and a seemingly unimpressive painting of some naked fellow in a field with some flimsy and carefully draped cloths that covered the essentials. Just. 

Behind me John gasped.

“Orpheus!”

We all looked at him wonderingly. He too blushed.

“That was the Rubens sold at auction a few months back”, he said. “Purchased by a mystery buyer for an unknown amount but rumoured to be worth well into the thousands.”

“I would wager”, I said with a smile, “that when you have those experts back and show them _these_ items, they will conclude that all three are of considerable worth. Your grandfather has his last joke – and when your cousins find out, I am sure that they will be _highly_ amused!”

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Oddly enough, they were not. As I had expected the prayer-book turned out to be a rare sixteenth century one from Scotland and the only surviving one of its type while the chair, which I had thought incredibly ugly and best suited for firewood, was from a German designer who had created it for a king (presumably one that he had disliked intensely). After all three items had indeed been assessed as having a total value in excess of ten thousand pounds¶, Mr. Jukes's cousins decided to contest the will on the grounds that their grandfather had not been of sound mind. Unfortunately for them he had pre-empted such a move by having four eminent physicians sign sworn documents confirming his sanity, so all his grandsons' efforts came to was a large legal bill. Mr. Jukes and my half-nephew sold their inheritance then purchased a large estate back up near Bamburgh where they made a name for themselves as generous philanthropists – even if one of them still blushed far too much!

Meanwhile John and I had a most pleasant journey back to Chuffingden, even if he had to be helped from the train at Newcastle.

And at King's Cross. 

And at Berwick.

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It was still not a strut, by the way.

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_Notes:_  
_† The Collywell Bay branch, which really was renamed for the reasons given in the story, was to achieve an almost unique if unwanted place in railway history. Its opening was first delayed by the Great War, then further delayed when the expected new housing failed to materialize, and finally abandoned in 1931. The stations at Brierdene and Collywell Bay were fully built complete with tracks and sidings but the line never saw a single train!_  
_‡ About £3,000 ($3,750) at 2020 prices._  
_¶ In excess of £1 million ($1.25 million) at 2020 prices, probably much higher considering how far such valuable items have exceeded inflation in their worth._

__

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	33. Interlude: Beaumont, Bullnoses and By-Bys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1913\. John is horrified by something in the newspaper (not of course in the social pages, which he never looks at). The dynamic duo's godsons are doing well for themselves while those young gentlemen's father Valiant LeStrade has his twentieth – TWENTIETH! – and last child. And someone chooses between the devil and the deep blue sea.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

Not long after our return from Northumberland we learned the dreadful news that Captain Robert Falcon Scott's bid to become the first man to reach the South Pole had not only failed but had cost the lives of him and his brave fellow adventurers. Such were the perils of our age, I supposed.

Oh a lighter note, I also remember being horrified by an advertisement for the new Morris Oxford† 'auto-mobile' (they were also being called 'cars' now, short for horseless carriages I supposed) which it was claimed could reach speeds of fifty miles per hour. However I did not, as some blue-eyed genius claimed, go on about it _ad infinitum_. 

I did not!

In spring we had a welcome visit from our godsons Tristram and Torre LeStrade, both then twenty-four and handsome young men who had done their Valiant father proud. Sherlock's godson Tristram had indeed followed his prodigious father into the local constabulary while my godson Torre had sort of followed my direction and was in his final year of training to be a veterinarian. Despite now being nearly fifty-two our friend and his wife had incredibly just had their _twentieth_ (and likely to Mrs. LeStrade's relief, their last) child, a son who had been named Beaumont. The boy's father was seemingly bent on repopulating eastern Westmorland in person!

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“This renewal of the Balkan War is bad”, I sighed as I read the paper one fine May Day. “They are saying now that it could drag in the whole Continent if people are not careful.”

“People will always want self-determination”, Sherlock said. “But unfortunately they do not live in nice neat packages, so many countries lay claim to the lands of others because a few people of their own culture live just across the border, like Germany did over Alsace and Lorraine last century. Then you have those who want to start new nations, yet seem as bigoted and inflexible as those already in the game.”

I sighed. The Continent was one huge mess and seemed set to stay as much. Foreigners!

“On the plus side”, he said, “Randall has volunteered to go out there.”

I was surprised at that.

“I did not know that he was an expert on the politics of that region”, I said.

“Apparently he committed some new _faux pas_ at home, so Mother and Muriel agreed that he should translate their entire combined works”, he grinned. “In a choice between facing a horde of raging Slavs and two lots of literary 'masterpieces', there was only ever going to be one winner!”

That, I could fully understand!

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_Notes:_   
_† Commonly called 'the Bullnose' because of its distinctive front, it generated 16 BHP (in comparison even a modern Smart car manages four times as much) and was priced at £175 which is about £16,000 ($19,500) at 2020 prices._

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	34. Interlude: Painting And Pillar-Boxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1913\. The shadow of war looms ever larger but life goes on. A day at the races ends badly for one lady, pillar-boxes get attacked because the suffragettes think that that will surely win then support (it does not), and Sherlock uses his money to ensure that there is still only one Chuffingden.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

The summer of that year was marked by the strange and tragic case of the suffragette Miss Emily Davison, who threw herself in front of the king's horse Anmer during the Derby. Quite why she sacrificed herself in this way remained a mystery; it only hardened attitudes against her cause which had also not been helped by the frankly inexplicable decision of her fellow idiots to start attacking pillar-boxes of all things! 

The Continent was still a mess with the Balkan Wars having ended and, naturally, no-one having been happy with the resultant peace treaty. Then there were the ongoing troubles over Ireland with the Commons trying to pass Home Rule and the Lords repeatedly blocking it. What with one thing and another I was glad that Sherlock and I were away from it all in our own little corner of England.

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Chuffingden lay as I have said before on a minor road running from the main Lewes to Eastbourne road southwards across the beautiful Downs. Our road saw precious little traffic; it was winding with several blind corners and did not really go anywhere, there being a superior road to its eventual destination of Seaford that ran straight there from Lewes. There were also two fords, the Blind Reach in the village and a second one about a mile to the south. This latter place was one of Sherlock's favourite spots to do his new hobby of painting. 

However that warm October day we went there as per usual and found that the nearby farm was up for sale. The owners Mr. and Mrs. Saddleworth told us that they were retiring and had had an offer for the place from some developers.

“Which could mean a whole new village”, Sherlock said looking concerned. “There used to be a hamlet called Upper Chuffingden there in the Middle Ages before – the chapel still exists inside the farm grounds – and like Martinsthorpe back in Rutlandshire, it too was depopulated to make way for sheep. Because of that the council is much more likely to allow building on it. They might even replace the fords with bridges and widen the road across the Downs, which would mean a lot more traffic in our own village.”

I was disappointed because this was one of our favourite spots for Sherlock to paint, for me to watch him until he looked at me, smiled that smile and..... well, what else were roadside barns for?

Fortunately there are advantages to having money and influence. Sherlock was able to buy the farm himself and limit the restored Upper Chuffingden to two sets of terraced houses. Which as things turned out would be very useful.

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	35. Interlude: Descent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1914\. In the months before the terrible Great War, the suffragettes continue in their determined and successful efforts to lose public support while Sherlock and John discuss films (which, Sherlock being Sherlock, leads to Sherlock discussing Something Else). John is also able to help out the son of someone who still leers at his man.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

“Bert who?”

Sherlock looked up at me in surprise, his hot chocolate still frothing around his mouth. He really was a grub at times.

“Mr. George Berthold Samuelson”, I said. “He has approached our publishers Brett, Burke & Hardwicke, asking if he can buy the rights to one and maybe more of our stories.”

“Why?” the grub asked looking confusedly around the room before I pointedly lifted the tea-cosy and pulled out his precious barley-sugars from the 'perfectly safe place' that he had left them in. 

“He wants to make a film† about the Wriothesley case, 'A Study In Scarlet'”, I said, handing him the bag and not commenting on the happy whimpers that I got in return. “He thinks that it will be a great success, inviting the masses in to stare at our doings.”

“I do not like that at all!” he said forcibly.

I was surprised.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because only I get to stare at your doings, John Watson!”

I just rolled my eyes at him. 

“They are talking about a film later this year that will be in colour”, I said. “I wonder how they can do that?”

“Technology is wonderful these days”, he said. “Who knows what they will produce next. Maybe some sort of dildo shaped in such a way as to deliberately keep pressing on the male prostate, so the poor sap who has to wear it out and about is in constant agony.”

I was about to wonder at how he had gotten from cinematography to sexual aids when I saw what had presumably come in the post that morning. I gulped in fear.

And, as it turned out, with good reason!

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Summer arrived and my son Ivan's wife Anne gave birth to a daughter, named after her mother and making me an unrecognised grandfather for a third time. Sigh. But at least I had a lot of manly embracing, if only because Sherlock likes that sort of thing. 

_Much as he likes smirking, the bastard!_

My love had far more society connections that I did, so I had felt particularly pleased when I had been able to use one of my own to help a friend. Even if it was the son of a friend. Even if the friend in question had leered at 'someone' during our last visit to London, something over which I had not been the least bit jealous.”

“I remember just how not jealous you were, John”, said someone who did not want to get laid or be doing any laying this month. 

He looked at me. Possibly this week.

I had not been _that_ jealous. They did not make hotel beds like they used to, and after seeing Mr. Benjamin Jackson-Giles whom some annoying blue-eyed person still called 'Benji', we had gone to the hotel and... well, I had not strutted at 'someone' needing two cushions the following morning.

It was Mr. Jackson-Giles's youngest (and twentieth; he was bad as our Westmorland friend!) son Stafford whom I had been able to help, as the boy was determined to become a doctor and had started skipping school to spend time helping out at St. Bartholomew's where I myself had trained. In return for his promising to complete his education I had arranged for him to help out with and attend lectures so he could get a head-start on his medical training. I had also promised to buy him some medical equipment each birthday and Christmas thereafter.

Some perverted blue-eyed detective insisted of course on 'testing' said equipment on me first. I mean, a stethoscope being used for.... really?

_Really!_

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The suffragettes continued in their relentless efforts to lose support; the British public did not for some strange reason take kindly to seeing paintings in their galleries attacked by mad women wielding meat cleavers or to their seaside hotels and churches being set on fire 'to make a point'. The Irish problem seemed set for a resolution at least; the Lords accepted home rule with the proviso that the six mainly Protestant counties in the North of Ireland would be allowed a vote on their own future, with or not with their twenty-six southern neighbours. It was all a mess but then it was Ireland.

Unfortunately the law could not be passed before Europe's luck finally ran out. The war we had dodged twice thus far suddenly loomed large and would bring us our final case, three years after the last one – but not before the growing crisis over Sherlock's grandson Trelawney's crumbling marriage took a most unexpected turn after his wife gave birth to a daughter Joanna that, my love told me, was most certainly not that of its supposed father. Sherlock was I knew weighing up what to over this when on top of the growing political crisis we both had to head off to Wiltshire.

In order to break up his grandson's marriage.

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_Notes:_   
_† This and the 1916 follow-up 'The Valley Of Fear' have both been lost._

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	36. Case 365: The Adventure Of Prince Charming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1914\. The penultimate case of the dynamic duo and Sherlock's sort-of nephew wants him to break up his actual grandson's marriage. As you do.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

You wait all day for a 'bus, they say, then two come along at once. Such it was with our last two cases which came almost on top of each other as the Continent finally tumbled over the brink into war, courtesy once more of the Hun. These two cases could hardly have been more different; the first was a family matter although important for those involved (and for me as it was my family), while the second could well have affected the course of the forthcoming war.

I was more than happy with my life in those halcyon days, my beautiful John and our cottage on the Downs. But we knew full well that the shadow of war loomed over us and conflict now looked all but certain. Yesterday we had received the dreadful news that the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand†, had been assassinated by a Serb 'patriot'. War between Austria-Hungary and Serbia now looked inevitable,and that would surely drag in most of Europe.

The only slight ripple in our existence had been the matter of my friend Lowen who, bad boy as he was, had sent me a letter to say that he, Solario and Salerio were thinking of retiring to the coast themselves some day, and I had got another very thorough fucking out of John as he had attempted to talk me out of suggesting how nice Sussex was. I somehow never quite got round to telling him they had in fact settled on Cornwall.

I was so bad to him. But it was not as if I had _asked_ Lowen to send me that letter. And even if I had, there was no proof.

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Before quitting Baker Street we had made sure that only a few trusted friends and family knew of our new cottage's address. So when that September morning I heard the sound of someone knocking at the door and a familiar voice outside calling us I should not perhaps have been surprised – except if that was who I thought it was, he should have been well over a thousand miles away! Staggering to the window and peering out, I saw that it was indeed him.

“Tan?” I yawned, looking down at my nephew. I still thought of him as such even through there were no actual blood ties between us, and he had kept his last name he said to honour me and what he had called his 'inimitable mother of my mother's former husband'; he knew as well as I did how Mother would respond to anyone using the g-word in her hearing. It would be Pompeii and Vesuvius all over again, except a hundred times worse.

A hawk-faced young fellow all too familiar to me stared up from the path, indisputably his real father's son even more than he had been when I had last seen him. He had filled out a little now that he was turned thirty (which given that as a boy he had resembled a broomstick was no bad thing) and become even more handsome, but there was a frown on his face that did not bode well.

“I will wait”, he called up. “Please, can you and Uncle John make yourselves decent _before_ opening the door?”

I blushed. We were not _that_ bad!

“Love the view when you bend over in those panties!” John called from behind me.

All right, maybe my nephew had a point. From the look of horror on his face he had heard that remark all too clearly – which bearing in mind how much of the world he himself had seen, had to take some doing!

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I was more than a little surprised to see my nephew because I had thought his 'foreign service' still had some time to run. Tantalus had extended his 'activities' beyond Sheikh Khalid's 'away harem' in England and in recent years had travelled to Arbir to, ahem, 'service' his 'home' one. He had I thought only been a few months out there on his most recent trip so I had not expected him back any time soon. Yet now he was here.

We made ourselves fairly decent and I only had to kiss John twice to stop him grumbling before we descended to let my nephew in. I should point out (because several of John's readers asked and he did not mention the fact) that after the rebuilding we had ordered it had two full-sized bedrooms, one upstairs and one down because.....

My nephew _did_ have a point, damn him!

“I have a problem”, Tantalus said sitting down as John went to make me coffee. “I need your help Uncle Sherlock, Uncle John.”

“How may we assist you?” I asked, smiling at the appellation.

“I need you to break up a marriage. Of someone you know.”

I looked at him in surprise. _What?_

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“As you know I went to Arbir with Cal for the fourth time at the end of last year”, my nephew said sipping his coffee and still looking worried. “It still worked out very well; he had a lot of very satisfied wives, he and Elizabeth now have four sons of their own the eldest of whom, his namesake, will succeed him one day, and his other wives were all very happy with what they thought of as his, uh, performance. They called me something quite unpronounceable and Cal laughed when I told him because it actually meant 'he who waxes mightily'.”

Having seen my nephew in all his glory one day I knew that he could rival the great (in every sense!) Mr. Galahad LeStrade in one department. But it would be better not to mention that as it would doubtless make John feel..... John.

“There was an outbreak of disease in the capital which had Cal worried”, our guest continued, “as he knew that outsiders like me were more susceptible to it. Luckily it also meant that traditionally the sheikh was expected to suspend his, ahem, activities while dealing with it, so I took the chance to come home for a while. I went to see my parents in Norfolk first; their new house in Caister is quite spectacular with its views. Blaze was looking particularly happy and sends his regards; he managed a whole two sentences at one point.”

I smiled at his gentle teasing of his mostly silent stepfather, and brother to John's lest favourite Cornish ex-fisherman of all time. Then our visitor's expression changed slightly.

“I had planned to come back via the main line through Norwich”, he said, “but that was blocked so I went via Great Yarmouth and took the slow train down to Ipswich. Except I was delayed because we were held at one station for an inordinate amount of time, long enough for us all to get out and stretch our legs. When I finally made it to Ipswich I found that someone had somehow managed to place a folded piece of paper in my jacket pocket; I know that it had not been there when I had boarded the train at Great Yarmouth. Nothing had been taken which was also odd; I had several coins in there. The paper read 'save a second Hawke from crashing'.”

We both looked at him in confusion before John suddenly spoke up.

“Titanic!”

Now it was Tantalus's and my turn to look confused.

“The maiden voyage was delayed because her sister ship the 'Olympic' was badly damaged when she was rammed by 'H.M.S. Hawke'”, he explained. “I suppose one could say that that had helped cause the sinking, otherwise she would have been crossing at a time of less ice. One Hawke crashing. But what could the second one be unless the old ship is still under that half-blind captain‡.... oh.”

He had got it, as had I. I looked at our visitor curiously.

“You mentioned that you were held for a long time at one station”, I said carefully. “Was it Darsham, by any chance?”

He looked at me in amazement.

“Yes”, he said, “the station for Dunwich. How did you know that?”

I thought of my twin brother Sherrinford. Clearly he had caused this – impressive since as far as I knew he was still in the United States – but what did he want of me?

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I went to that organization you once told me about in London, Swordland's”, he said. “Mr. Tudor there was very helpful and told me that it most likely referred to the Hawke family who the doctor mentioned in some of his stories. I had a bad feeling about this and I read in the 'Times' that one of the family was in London so I decided to go and see him. That was Trey.”

Oddly enough we had been speaking of my grandson only the other week, and not just because of his wife giving birth to a daughter who was almost certainly not his. Come to that....

I looked at our visitor curiously. He looked back in surprise. The clock ticked loudly in the corner of the room.

“Why do you call him 'Trey' rather than 'Lord Trelawney'?” I asked innocently. 

It was a cruel question for I already knew the answer, even before my nephew's fierce blush confirmed it.

“Mr. Tudor told me that he was your grandson because I was family and you had said I could be trusted”, he said, continuing to avoid my eye. “He admitted me and he was so... so....”

He stopped seemingly lost for words. 

_“Beautiful”_ , he said at last. “Not just physically but in the light within. I may have only managed three decades in this world of ours but I have seen far too much evil in the world, often from those with a plausible shell of goodness. He just.... shone.”

John sniffed. He was obviously getting a cold again. So was I.

“You are truly a man of the world”, I told my nephew, “so I am going to be honest with you. It is a complex situation overall but when I was much younger I had a brief affair in which the woman involved later had a daughter, and decided not to inform me of that fact. That daughter grew up and married Lord Harry Hawke, so Trey as you call him is indeed my grandson. As you doubtless also know my grandson's wife is of a sufficiently questionable character that we cannot be sure of any of her children are his. I doubt that their marriage is long for this world anyway, but...”

I stopped. John was suddenly looking very worried.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The doctor has just realized what I found out from Mr. Tudor”, my nephew said gravely. “Trey's foul father-in-law recently purchased a controlling interest in the 'Clarion', that weekly rag that calls itself a newspaper. His daughter will use that connection to make any divorce as unpleasant and costly as possible.”

“Then we must prevent her from so doing”, I said firmly. “Has my grandson returned to the country yet?”

“Yes, he left for Wiltshire the day before I left.”

“Can you find a pretext to take him somewhere away from Brunton for the day, to Marlborough maybe?” I asked.

“I can”, my nephew said, “but what of it?”

“Because we are going to make his wife sue for a divorce!”

He nodded at that, then suddenly turned pale. I wondered why before I realized. 

Ah. He was looking at the mounted St. George's Flag panties (remnants thereof) with the plaque below stating 'Mount Watson, Conquered New Year's Day 1907'. Oops!

“You two!” he grumbled.

I sniggered. Wait until I showed him around and he saw all the other pairs! After all, what were young relatives for other than to be traumatized by their elders?

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“There is one thing that your nephew does not know”, John said to me as we stood on the northbound platform of an otherwise deserted Collingbourne Kingston Station in Wiltshire, awaiting the arrival of Lord Trelawney. We had not told my grandson that we were coming and we were well hidden behind some quite impressive station topiary.

“Something that you garnered from those social pages that you never read?” I teased gently.

He pouted in a way that had me more than half-minded to drag him into the waiting-room and have my way with him. Unfortunately our quarry was expected any minute. Life was unfair like that.

“No”, he said. “It is Peter; he told me something in confidence but he said that I might tell you in the circumstances.”

“What?” I asked.

“Greg, a friend of his is doctor to Miss Beatrice Hallows”, he said, “the lady who is being courted by one Lord Tobias Hawke. Greg called Peter in to confirm a diagnosis for him; Miss Hallows can never have children.”

I saw his point at once. That sort of thing was bound to become public knowledge if Miss Hallows actually married Lord Hawke, and it would mean his brother – and worse, the excuse for a female that he was currently married to – the next in line. Of course being a twin the odds on his ever getting the title were at best fifty-fifty, but it had to be considered. John had also explained to me that the disease that the Hawke boys had suffered from some years back and which had exposed my real connection to them would make their having healthy children less likely, although not impossible.

“What are we planning?” he asked.

“Mrs. Hawke will likely remain married to her poor husband until she finds something better or he divorces her”, I explained. “The latter is fraught with social problems but she may be persuaded to sue for a divorce herself if she thinks that she would win a large cash settlement from it, either as a pay-off or through the courts. A sizeable enough large divorce settlement would offer her the chance to marry some other poor su.... gentleman who might be prepared to overlook her many failings.”

My love smiled at my verbal non-trip.

“This morning a latter arrived at the Hall for Lord Trelawney”, I said, “confirming that his travelling companion for their day in London has managed to get him into the most exclusive molly-house that our capital city can boast, and that all sorts of 'delights' are going to be laid on. I contacted his valet Mr. Hebden and he will 'accidentally' place it in her pile of letters, helped by the fact that the untidy wording on the envelope makes the 'Mr. T.' look like 'Mrs.'. She will see this as an opportunity to catch her husband in the act so to speak, no doubt with her London lawyer present. That she employs the 'services' of that vulture Mr. Terence May does not surprise me in the least; birds of a feather do indeed flock together.”

A gentleman emerged on to the platform and I recognized my grandson who was immediately greeted by his nephew and led away down the platform from us. The first-class carriages on this train were always at the rear we had been told, so we would for once be travelling second-class to follow them.

“But how will she be able to follow them to London if they are only going to Marlborough?” John asked.

“All things are possible if one tries hard enough”, I grinned. “Talking of hard, let us look forward to this evening and that wonderful new unguent that came down from London the other day.”

He blushed prettily and I saw the distant smoke of the approaching train. I worried for a few moments but then I saw a carriage drawing quickly into the station forecourt. The train duly arrived and we got on; just as the guard was ready to depart a sharp-faced woman in a black dress hurried out of the ticket-office and boarded a ladies' compartment in the middle of the train. A second-class one, I noted, even if her dress very clearly denoted first. I smiled and sat back, thinking it a pity that we had no time for.... that.

Definitely later!

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After a short journey we reached Savernake (High Level) Station where I gestured to John that we should get out.

“Is Mr. Buckingham not going to Marlborough after all?” John asked.

“Watch!” I grinned.

We looked as two familiar figures got out of the front of the train and hurried away towards the lane that led the short distance to the Low Level Station on the Great Western line to London. Moments later the woman from earlier followed them.

“Two actor friends of mine”, I grinned. “Mr. Hebden was particularly obliging in supplying me details of Lord Trelawney's favourite coat which, fortunately, is quite distinctive.”

“Like the new one that you have on”, John smiled.

“You will not be saying that tonight when I will be fucking you wearing only the coat”, I said amiably.

The ability to leave him spluttering as I walked away. Still as enjoyable as ever!

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We made the train to Paddington in good time and fortunately the woman did not try to get closer to her quarry.

“How will she be able to both get her lawyer and keep track of them once we reach London?” John asked.

“Most obligingly her letter this morning gave the address of Lowen's molly-house”, I grinned. “He is waiting there with a dozen of his 'boys', several doses of chloroform and a photographer renowned for being able to develop his work very quickly. We shall be able to confront the woman with evidence of exactly what she was hoping to accuse her husband of doing, visiting a molly-house – and with rather more besides!”

He looked at me in confusion. I was going to have a whole lot of sexual frustration to work off later if he kept that up. Good!

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Just over six hours later we were sat in a small London hotel facing two of the least pleasant people it has ever been my displeasure to have to breathe the same air as (this would be another meeting that would require a long, hot bath afterwards). Mrs. Samantha Hawke was a blonde female of some twenty-six years of age, whose permanent sneer had wrecked what little beauty she may once have possessed. Mr. May may have been a decade older and with less make-up (although incredibly he did have a large gold-ear-ring!) but he was pretty much a male version of the same. They stared at the copies of the photographs I had shown them in stony silence.

“A court will not admit these as evidence”, the lawyer said, but I could hear the uncertainty in his words.

“The 'Times' newspaper would”, I said. “There are many scandal magazines who would pay a king's ransom for these, or for the testimony of the gentleman next to you holding that celery stick. Then there is Lady Soper, who might not be best pleased at the pictures of the female with her husband and those other 'ladies of negotiable affection'. Not of course forgetting your own clients who might be more than a little interested....”

“That is blackmail!” he protested hotly.

“That is business”, I said. “These documents state that this woman is seeking a divorce from her husband and waives her claim to everything except custody of her children.”

“I want money for them!” the woman said quickly.

I did not even bother to feign surprise at her words. Instead I looked at her and smiled.

“My friends can get access to all sorts of things”, I said. “For example, they recently gained access to some rather interesting blood test results of _yours_ , madam.”

“So?” she said archly.

“So indeed”, I said. “You are doubtless not aware of it but scientists have recently established a new understanding of the constituents of human blood. In particular they have found three such which are extremely important, especially if they ever develop the ability to give people blood to replace losses during accidents, say. The key fact is that these constituents are hereditary, so while this new understanding cannot prove things, it can _dis_ prove them.”

“I do not understand”, she said, looking bored.

“You had better try”, I said. “Your children have factor C in their blood – that is on record – but neither you nor Lord Trelawney has it; we had his blood tested yesterday. Therefore those children _must_ be the result of affairs between you and one – or more – men who _do_ have that in their blood. There is no other way that it could have come about, and as the children are not Lord Trelawney's blood he will not be obliged to pay a penny towards them.”

She looked at me as if she wanted to hit me. I really hoped that she would try; John would take her down in a flash.

“Your soon to be ex-husband is a decent gentleman”, I said, “unlike _some_ people that I could mention” (I glanced at the scowling lawyer before continuing). “You will sign this and revoke all claims on him, and I will ensure that the courts grant a decree _nisi_ in short order. You will move out of the Hall tonight; do not take more than one handbag or these pictures – _all_ of them – will be the talk of London tomorrow. I do not doubt that a true gentleman like Lord Trelawney will make some sort of financial settlement on you little though you deserve any such, but that is totally of his own choosing. Sign, please.”

She glared at me again but signed without even reading the papers. The lawyer looked as if he might object but a look from me stopped him, and he slunk out after his horrible client.

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I decided that I wished to give my grandson the good news myself that evening even if it meant a night in Wiltshire before we could return to our cottage and all that long-delayed sex (I defined it as long-delayed because). It also meant that we could travel back down on the same train as the soon to be ex-Mrs. Hawke and make sure she did keep to her side of the bargain, which luckily for her she did. I was sure that she had all sorts of jewellery and expensive things in her bag which she ordered to be taken out to her carriage, and fortunately she did not check and therefore spot the identical one that I had had the servants substitute for it. If she wanted to carry pieces of an old brick wrapped in dirty sheets all the way to London, let her. 

As the minutes ticked by however I began to wonder what was keeping my nephew and grandson. Mr. Hebden came in and kindly said that he would make rooms up for us in the west wing rather than having to go back into the village to the tavern there. Finally when it was nearly half-past nine the two wanderers returned... oh. 

_Oh!_

I did not need to hear the little cries of pain at every step. I did not even need to see the hickey that could probably be spotted from the surface of the Moon, lurking above my nephew's skew-whiff collar, nor the tattered clothes, nor the expression that told me here was a man who had little left in the tank. My grandson's expression was a smugness level that even I would have been proud of. 

_He was truly my blood!_

What was left of my nephew limped over to his chair and smiled gratefully at his sort-of relative who helped lower him, even if he did yelp once he was down. He glazed unfocussedly at me before pulling himself together.

“All.... well?” he managed. Even his voice was broken.

“All is well”, I smiled. “My grandson's staff have very generously made us up rooms for the night, so we will fill you in on all the details tomorrow morning.”

“I shall fill him in again _long_ before that!” Lord Trelawney grinned. “Come on, Tan. There is a comfortable bed up there with your name on it.”

My nephew looked at him gratefully.

“And mine as well!” the nobleman grinned darkly.

The gratefulness metamorphosed into sheer unadulterated terror. Despite his slender figure my grandson hoisted my quaking nephew to his feet, swept him into his strong arms and carried him to the doorway.

“Welcome to the family again, Tan!” I called out.

“He will be coming very well!” my grandson growled. “We will see you tomorrow – _probably!”_

They were gone. I chuckled after them.

“It does mean another night away from the cottage”, John sighed. “And that new unguent.”

I grinned and stood up. 

“Useful things, doctor's bags”, I grinned. “One can pack all sorts of things into them!”

It was not only my nephew who was in for a rough night!

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Postscriptum: Thanks to the wonders of the modern telegraphic system, my grandson and my nephew received an unexpected present from the latter's previous 'employer' the following month. Sheikh Khalid wrote that he understood both the importance of appearances and the difficulties in obtaining reliable servants – so he had dispatched the two giant eunuchs who my randy nephew had somehow found the time and energy for while in Arbir and who had been in on the harem secret! I suggested inviting Bill and Ben along the next time my relatives visited us, and John gave me such a look!

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_Notes:_   
_† Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) had been Duke of Austria and heir presumptive of his uncle the elderly Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916). The duke had had a great fondness for hunting; ironically he had nearly been killed the year before when during a visit to England a gun had gone off and had only narrowly missed him._   
_‡ Captain William Frederick Blunt (1870-1928). 'H.M.S. Hawke' was his eleventh command; he was transferred just three months after the Olympic incident for which he had been very clearly to blame. The Royal Navy waited three years after his retirement in 1919 before 'promoting' him to Rear-Admiral._

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	37. Case 366: His Last Bow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1914\. The final case involves a tall murderer in a deer-stalker with the initials S.H. – and the King of England!

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

We had only been at our cottage for two nights following our return from Wiltshire to assist Sherlock's grandson Lord Trelawney Hawke when we were summoned to the capital on a matter of great urgency. Now we were back in our old rooms at 221B Baker Street, a place that I had never thought to see again.

I stared around in disbelief; the whole thing had an air of unreality about it. It looked as if we had been gone for ten minutes, not ten years. Everything was exactly the way we had left it back in 1904 with not a speck of dust on what were clearly copies of some of our favourite possessions, with even a copy of the famous fireside chair that I knew was safely back in our beloved cottage. Besides me, Sherlock chuckled.

“Surprised?” he asked.

“A little”, I confessed. “What is going on here?”

“What do you think, doctor?” Mr. Guilford Holmes asked edging past us. “It is basically a 'Johnlock' Museum. Your publishers rented the place off Mrs. Rockland after you moved out and they also took Room Four for someone to keep an eye on the place. Her, ahem, copious family takes up all the other rooms. People want to see where the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes solved all those cases you wrote about; some even pay to spend the night here then come away with a commemorative certificate.”

I wrinkled my nose in distaste. 

“You brought us here to show us this?” I asked.

His smile faded. 

“You know that we would not have called on you for help unless things were desperate”, he said. “Well, they are now really, _really_ desperate. Randall sent me a telegram yesterday from the Balkans and his worst fears look set to come true. The Austrians have made a whole host of demands on the Serbs after the assassination and the Russians have made it clear that this time they will come to the aid of their fellow Slavs. The war that we have been dodging for the past few decades looks like it is finally going to happen.”

Mr. Guilford Holmes had taken over the administration of our 'retirement' a few years back when his brother Randall had been dispatched to south-east Europe to monitor the increasingly dangerous situation there (he had not been shot yet, despite all those prayers!). In first Morocco, then Bosnia, then Morocco again war between the two political blocks had looked set to erupt only for cooler heads to prevail on each occasion. But that luck could not last forever – and the assassination last month of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire) by a Serb had exacerbated the already high tensions between Vienna and Belgrade. It was indeed less a question of whether war would break out and more one of whether Great Britain and the Empire would be drawn into it.

“It is like a set of dominoes”, Sherlock's brother had explained in the carriage on the way here. “Austria attacks Serbia who calls on its ally Russia which unlike six years back is now ready to answer that call. Russia calls on France for help while Austria calls on Italy and Germany. Berlin is looking for any excuse to attack France but their common border is too well-defended so they will have to go through Belgium. Since we have guaranteed that country's neutrality because of its ports facing us, we look set be dragged in.”

“The Germans would be stupid to try such a thing”, I said. “They cannot take on France _and_ Russia, let alone us as well.”

“They will rely on a quick victory against France, or failing that to seize its major industries in the north-east of the country”, Mr. Guilford Holmes explained. “They believe that the Russians will be slow to mobilize with their infrastructure still fairly poor, the Italians will attack south-eastern France and the Austrians will secure their own eastern borders. They also think, perhaps with more justification, that despite all we have done to prop up the Ottoman Empire they too might be brought on side or at least kept neutral. It is not so much whether they are right or wrong on all those but what the Kaiser _believes_ ; he is the sort of Teutonic maniac who thinks that one more victory against the French will finish them as a serious rival, and in that at least he may well be right.”

“I do not see how you think that we can do anything”, I said. “We are not diplomats.”

“True”, our host said. “However by a stroke of bad luck the French president is coming to England tomorrow for what was originally going to be just an informal visit. In view of the situation in the Balkans, King George wants to do what he can to make him feel welcome in order to strengthen the ties between our nations. The two gentlemen will attend the performance of a play in Shaftesbury Avenue, and your attendance would most certainly be appreciated.”

“Why?” Sherlock asked.

His brother reddened. I began to get a bad feeling.

“The play is called 'Before 221B'”, he said. “It is all about the two of you meeting in London three years before Bargate and solving the theft of the Crown Jewels. I know, I know; I feel much the same about some of your so-called 'fans' as you do, but our prisons and asylums are full enough as it is! The French president is an ardent fan of 'Johnlock' – I loathe that word as much as I know both of you do – and he has asked if he might meet you. Of course the King-Emperor cannot command your attendance, but the country needs it.”

“When is this play going to take place?” Sherlock asked.

“Friday”, his brother said. 

We both looked hard at him, and he flinched.

“Friday as in two days away?” Sherlock asked dryly. 

“They sprung it on me too”, his brother said defensively. “It is not just your showing up to shake hands. The heads of state of both France and Great Britain in an open royal box. It could be an assassin's dream!”

“Can you secure us the box next to the royal one?” Sherlock asked. 

“We have already secured the ones to each side.” 

“I should also like to see the play beforehand”, Sherlock said. “Are there any viewings before the royal performance?”

Was it my imagination, or did his brother hesitate for some reason?

“Just the one tomorrow night”, he said. “I shall get you both tickets.”

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Though Sherlock and I had solved many murders in our time I was seriously considering adding one of my own to the list – the ending of whoever had written this _travesty_ of a play! Sherlock seemed amused at the young actor portraying him (accurately) as an untidy genius after whom I was forever cleaning up, but me? Hah!

The actor playing Doctor Watson not only looked nothing like me – his taste in clothes was terrible – but the character was _miles_ off! I was either a bumbling idiot sure that I knew who had committed any crime and invariably being proved wrong, or I sat there cleaning my revolver while pouting in a way that I never did in real life (and if anyone in the vicinity felt compelled to suggest otherwise I would p..... probably not be happy!). I had _never_ shot at a maid just because she had made me jump, nor had I ever accidentally shot myself in the foot! As for my worshipping a slice of chocolate cake, that had never happened, or even if it had it could never be proven. The fact that the few people watching seemed to find the portrayal highly amusing did not help either!

“The man playing me is a Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch”, Sherlock whispered, “one of the top actors of his generation. He is rather good I must say. Yours is a young fellow called Mr. Martin Freeman. His portrayal of you is.... interesting.”

I glared at him.

 _“Your_ fellow is not portraying you as a pouting trigger-happy chocolate-mad badly-dressed imbecile with a tidiness fetish!” I grouched. 

“It could be worse”, he said comfortingly.

 _“How?”_ I demanded testily.

He did not have an answer to that. _And I saw that smirk!_

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I was still not seething when we arrived back at Baker Street to find a worried Mr. Guilford Holmes waiting for us. He did not even give us time to take our coats off. 

“The worst news imaginable!” he burst out. “Simon Hurst has gone missing!”

Clearly this was news of some import though I had no idea why. Sherlock, however looked grave.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We asked one of our agents in Berlin to check up on him and he has been gone for three days”, his brother groaned. “He has taken his passport with him. He could easily be here right now.”

“Who is this man?” I asked. Sherlock turned to me.

“One of the top assassins in this country, who we had thought safely on holiday visiting a friend in Germany”, he said grimly. “Our job has become that much harder. So we shall just have to change the rules of the game to suit us.”

We both looked at him in confusion.

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I awoke on Friday morning to find as had so often been the case in our many years at Baker Street, that I seemed to have acquired a human octopus during the night. I looked at the clock and saw that it said just after seven, which was early for me and impossible for Sherlock. I silently hoped that Mrs. Rockland had had the foresight to make coffee for him.

He opened one blue eye at me and squinted at the early morning light. 

“Ugh!” he muttered. “What time is it?”

“Just after seven”, I told him. 

To my surprise he groaned.

“What is it?” I asked anxiously.

“Guilford is coming at nine to take us to the morning rehearsals”, he said. “These rooms are already booked for a party this weekend so we cannot stay here afterwards whatever happens. I had hoped that our last day here might be memorable.”

I grinned and raised his sleepy head, running a finger through his ever-present stubble and kissing him on the lips.

“It will be”, I whispered, “if before he arrives you take me in every room here!”

His eyes shot open and a feral smile creased his features. In seconds he was between my legs fingering me open while I writhed above him, waiting for him to get on with it. Get on with it he very quickly did pushing in and bottoming out with a grunt then setting to work straight away by fingering my nipples with one hand and rubbing my cock with the other. There was no way I could resist such a combined assault nor did I wish to, and I was coming in minutes. I was surprised that he did not come inside of me, but when he stood on the end of the bed I realized why.

“I shall be sixty myself very soon”, he said fingering his engraved cock-ring, “and I needed this to hold me back.”

Looking up at him I wondered if that was what it had felt like to sail beneath the Colossus of Rhodes, that short-lived wonder of the Ancient World. Except Sherlock was a living breathing wonder who was already dragging me off to the main room. The famous fireside chair had of course been replaced, the original one now residing in our little cottage otherwise the room was just as we left it all those years ago. Sherlock seated me on the couch my erection already rising again despite my sixty-two years and squatted naked over me before lowering himself onto me, taking me so quickly I nearly blacked out. I was supposed to be the one in charge here, but Sherlock was literally dragging the orgasm out of me and I came a second time with a satisfied grunt.

Into my bedroom next, and Sherlock all but threw me into the bed, my now tired cock flagging at all the effort. At least I was still loose enough to take him without any further preparation and he thrust in easily, reaching round and gently massaging my cock without trying to force another orgasm out of me. Yet despite my tiredness, I still managed a few feeble spurts as he drove hard inside me and this time he did come, grabbing me hard as he rode through a sudden orgasm.

“I broke the ring!” he muttered. “You are some manly man, John Watson!”

I smiled at the praise, but my limbs were leaden as he too me into the bathroom and eased me under the shower. Had he not been supporting me I might well have collapsed but the refreshing spray coupled with his tender ministrations as he kissed his way around my body made me feel a little stronger and when he ran his tongue up the underside of my cock, it actually managed to become almost fully erect again. Sherlock eased in behind me and slipped inside of me, not pushing for an orgasm this time but content to make us one somehow recharging me just by his presence. I leaned against the wall for support, and the movement caused him to brush against my prostate and come forcibly. My cock twitched, but that was all. I was done.

He sat me on the side of the bath while he ran the hot water and soon he had me nestling against him under the bubbles and steamy water, thankful that my shattered muscles were being supported by the water. It did not last long and we were interrupted by the sound of the bell.

“Guilford?” I whined.

“Breakfast”, he grinned, slipping out and seemingly unaffected by our little marathon. “I shall fetch it into the main room.”

I managed to summon the energy to lay a hand on his bare leg and he looked down at me.

“I love you”, I said simply.

“I know”, he smiled. “That makes me the luckiest man in all London Town!”

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Mr. Guilford Holmes scowled mightily when he called at the end of breakfast to collect us, muttering something about impossible sex-maniacs. Sherlock just smirked which made things worse, especially as I was still weak on my legs. I tried for a smile but it was too much effort.

“The play is not that bad”, Sherlock said comfortingly once we were in the cab on the very bumpy road to the theatre. “Look what you grew up into.”

I preened.

“Even if you could not shoot straight and pouted too much!”

I scowled (it was _not_ a pout). He chuckled and took my arm, which mollified me slightly.

Once at the theatre we were introduced to a Mr. William Benson, the director of this absolute, unmitigated travesty of a play. He was awestruck at our appearance and wanted to introduce us to all the cast but luckily Sherlock dissuaded him. I say luckily because I had brought my gun and _was sorely tempted to start using it!_

“They have to perform tonight”, Sherlock said to the fellow, shaking his head at me for some reason. “I do not want them to worry, especially as the doctor and I will be in the audience.”

“You... will be watching?” The man looked horrified (as he damn well should have been!).

“Indeed”, Sherlock said. “Pray tell us how you came to be performing this most remarkable work.”

I would have used quite a different adjective at that point, one both shorter and decidedly more Anglo-Saxon in tone. Mr. Benson squinted at Sherlock over the top of his round glasses clearly suspecting sarcasm, but as ever no-one was ever going to able to out-stare my blue-eyed genius. The director blinked several times as his eyes watered.

“The play was originally written by two brothers called Doyle, Mr. Arthur and Mr. Conan”, he said. “They run a small theatre group up in the city of York. Of course we had to adapt it somewhat for the London stage, and also because we were fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. Cumberbatch.”

“How did you come to be performing it?” Sherlock asked. “It is not the usual thing one sees on a London stage.”

 _Thank the Lord!_ I thought mutinously.

“Mr. Cumberbatch was on holiday in the White Rose County”, the fellow said, “and being a 'Johnlock' fan like myself he saw the play being advertised so decided to see what it was like. He asked the writers for a script and of course they said yes, though I do not yet know what they will make of our changes.”

“Such as?” I inquired perhaps just a tad coldly. The director took a notable step backwards. 

“People expect extremes in the theatre, doctor”, he said soothingly. “We have to exaggerate characteristics to make the audience laugh or cry. I take it that you have not see the performance yourselves as of yet?”

“We have read some reviews”, Sherlock cut in before I could say something that I would not have regretted in the slightest. “They were most intriguing, so we decided that as we were visiting the Old Country we would spend an evening watching ourselves. Vanity, one might say.”

“We should be honoured, but I will respect your wishes and not inform the actors beforehand”, he said. “I suppose that you are right; it would only make them even more nervous. Mr. Freeman nearly forgot his lines twice last night, as it was.”

 _Two more chances to make me look an even greater fool,_ I thought bitterly. _Oh lucky me!_

“How did you come to choose him as the young doctor?” Sherlock asked. “He is not as renowned as Mr. Cumberbatch.”

“He was one of twelve gentlemen who read for the part, and very keen”, the director said. “Physically he matched up to what was wanted but more importantly Mr. Cumberbatch has a reputation for being a little, ahem, a tad difficult when it comes to his fellow performers, and he took a strong dislike to several of the others that we had considered for the part. I do not think that he likes Mr. Freeman much either for that matter; however he at least tolerates him. He got on well with two of the other applicants but they both read poorly.”

“Divas!” I muttered. He smiled at me.

“I have seen Mr. Freeman before somewhere or other, and I noted then that he has a slight accent”, Sherlock observed. “Which country does he hail from originally?”

“He is an Austrian by birth”, Mr. Benson said, “but he has lived here since he was twelve. I believe that he is estranged from his father who still lives in Vienna.”

 _A German by any other name_ , I thought. _Interesting._

“I have one more question”, Sherlock said, sending me another annoying nod. “One of the reviews mentioned a scene where Mr. Cumberbatch walks behind a pillar in the middle of the stage and then disappears. Am I to assume that a trapdoor is involved?”

The director nodded. 

“A dual door, one that splits and opens downwards dropping him onto a large feather mattress”, he said. “There are footmarks on the stage; you cannot see those from the audience of course but unless someone stands _exactly_ where the footmarks are then the mechanism will jam. Except if someone else pulls the lever to open it. That is right at the back of the stage and for safety reasons it cannot be wedged into place but has to be held down.”

“I see”, Sherlock said. “I suppose that your artists run true to form and will not be in until later this morning?”

“That is correct”, he said. “Do you wish to examine the stage where it all takes place, sir?”

“I would like a quick look”, Sherlock said. “Do not disturb yourself sir; we shall only be a few minutes. Doctor, shall we go?”

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I moved to the front of the stage and stared out into the audience. Tonight there would be not just a couple of hundred members of the public but the King-Emperor of Great Britain and the President of France watching on. All looking at the bumbling fool that was Doctor John Hamish Watson.

 _At least I got the real thing_ , I thought morosely. 

“When the diva doctor has finished bowing to the assembled throng”, a voice came from right next to my ear, “we might perchance leave.”

I did not let out a girly shriek. It was a manly expression of surprise.

“You will pay for that!” I grumbled.

He looked at me coquettishly.

“Promise?” he grinned before disappearing through a door.

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After I had made my feelings clear about how annoyed I was to be called a diva (a point I made twice despite being my morning wake-up calls), Sherlock apologized. He did warn me however that he might have to slip away during the performance tonight but that I should watch the stage and tell him later what I thought of 'my performance'. However when he saw how cross I was he dragged me into a small dressing-room and more than made it up to me.

As I staggered out to the cab I wondered if I might sneak some cushions into my doctor's bag for that night's performance!

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The visit of king-emperor and president to the theatre was for obvious reasons done anonymously, and judging from the large but not massive crowds waiting outside the secrecy had worked. I only hoped that Sherlock's preparations to prevent any attack would work, too.

During the interlude I used the gentlemen's toilets and returned to find a note from Sherlock saying that he had been called away. I sighed and waited for my humiliation to resume. 

The play finished with two of the thieves captured and one having escaped, the latter breaking into the room in which our young selves were staying, to try to kill young Sherlock Holmes in revenge. Of course bumbling young John Watson inadvertently helped save the day by completely misreading the situation but allowing Sherlock time to get his pistol from a drawer and hold the attacker at gunpoint until the police arrived a few moments later. The closing lines were Sherlock thanking me for saving his life and me not having a clue what had been going on, which was par for my evening-long humiliation. Not even close to reality.

_How the hell could I hear him doing an eye-roll when he was not even there?_

The actors lined up on the stage with Mr. Cumberbatch and Mr. Freeman in the middle, and all bowed to the audience. Then a light suddenly switched to illuminate the royal box and everyone saw who had been watching them all evening, the audience rising as one to their feet. I assumed logically enough that the orchestra was going to play the National Anthem – but they did not. Because something else happened first. 

Still in his own spotlight Mr. Cumberbatch suddenly stepped forward and pointed the gun that he was still holding straight at the royal box. There were several gasps from the audience but no-one had the time to stop him. He squeezed the trigger..... and an explosion of red, white and blue paper erupted from the barrel!

The look on the actor's face was one of complete confoundment. He squeezed the trigger once again but only succeeded in creating more multicoloured confetti. Seeing policemen advancing from one side of the stage – I recognized our friend Chief-Inspector Baldur at their head – the actor ran quickly over to the trapdoor (the pillar had been removed at this point in the performance so I could see where he was going) and stood on it.

Nothing happened. 

He had time to jump up and down in an attempt to trigger the mechanism before the policemen were on him. At that moment the conductor of the orchestra belatedly came to his senses and led his orchestra into 'La Marseillaise' and followed it up with the National Anthem. Mr. Cumberbatch had by then long been dragged from the stage. And to the astonishment of the audience, Sherlock – the real one; I would never be fooled by any copy – came on wearing the same clothes as Mr. Cumberbatch and joined the cast in singing both songs lustily and loudly.

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“It made for a fitting last case”, my friend said as we returned to Baker Street for the last time. “Our final adventure together, and the murderer? Mr. Sherlock Holmes!”

The aftermath of the performance had been draining and had involved an overly-long interview with both the King-Emperor and the President that I would long remember. I had promised (in very bad French, corrected of course by my resident blue-eyed genius) to autograph a set of my complete works for him; by this time they were being published in at least a dozen languages including French. Both gentlemen had thanked us profusely, and I had spoken with and shaken hands with George the Fifth himself! The King-Emperor of a quarter of the known world!

I pulled myself together. 

“What made you suspect Mr. Cumberbatch?” I asked.

“He seemed the obvious candidate”, Sherlock said. “For one thing, whoever planned this had to have known about the visit of the French president as these things are planned months in advance. That meant someone most probably in the pay of either the Germans or the Austrians. When Mr. Cumberbatch happened across that theatre group in York, he realized what an opportunity it presented. Anyone who knows anything about the French president knows that he is fond of your writings, so if a play about us was on in London during his visit he would wish to see it. We know from the director's lack of reaction that the visit was kept secret.”

“So you suspected him from the start?” I asked. He nodded.

“My brother Sherrinford also gave me a clue that time in East Suffolk when he told me that not all blessings are good ones”, he said. “The name Benedict means blessed. If we are being honest the play was irredeemably atrocious, yet one of the leading young actors of our generation still wished to be in it. That seemed odd. His choice of the relatively untalented Mr. Freeman to play opposite him was also curious, but as the man had a Germanic background that might prove a useful diversion at some point.”

“But what happened with his gun?” I asked.

Sherlock smiled.

“Ah, before the gun there was the small matter of the trap-door”, he said. “I would say that he was most probably aiming for the president rather than the king.”

“Why aim for the president?” I asked.

“Because if King George dies then his son simply takes over”, Sherlock said. “I know that Guilford has some reservations about that young man, rightly so I fear, but the constitutional disturbance to our country would be minimal, at least at first. If the French president is shot while visiting the capital of a supposed ally however, all hell would break loose. The French have never coped well with change and their response to any German attack would be weakened. Thus Mr. Cumberbatch, who is by the way an excellent shot, would only need one bullet.”

“How do you know that he is an excellent shot?” I asked. 

“Miss St. Leger's ever-efficient organization has been finding out rather a lot about that young man for me”, Sherlock said. “Not only did his father provide him with a course of shooting lessons but the fellow also has expensive tastes which not even an actor of his talent's income could not possibly support. His bank account has received several mysterious deposits of late and it may be that with time they can be traced to the country which employed him.”

“What about the gun?” I asked.

“Having a gun with live bullets in it is dangerous especially in a theatre with so many people”, Sherlock said. “I managed to catch him at the start of the interlude swapping the gun with blanks for his own weapon and leaving it in the drawer from which he extracted it in the final scene. Once he had gone to his room I replaced the bullets with something more colourful.”

We had arrived at Baker Street by this time and to our surprise we saw Chief-Inspector Baldur coming down the steps. 

“I thought that you two might be home”, he said his face grave. “There is bad news.”

“Not another attempt on the French president?” I asked worried. He shook his head.

“No”, he said, “Mr. Cumberbatch. The police van taking him to the station was held up by a dozen armed men and he was dragged out and shot. There were only three officers and all unarmed, so they could not stop them. They were lucky that they did not get shot too.”

“Those who live by the sword die by it”, Sherlock said softly. “Doubtless he was promised a great reward by whichever country employed him. I almost wish that I could have been there to see him get it.”

I nodded.

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We went briefly upstairs to say a last goodbye to our rooms and it struck me that this was indeed no longer our home. The fake copies of what had once been our treasured possessions were truly symbolic; 221B was but a shadow of what had been and my future lay many miles to the south in the arms of the man that I loved. It was sad in a way but then that was the point of moving to a new life. One had to let go of the old to make room for it. 

We went to Mr. Guilford Holmes's hotel for the night, and we just slept together in silence as we reflected on a chapter of our lives that was not finally closed. That house had been part of our lives for the best part of two decades but now we had the cottage on the Downs and, most importantly of all, each other. Life was good.

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	38. Interlude: Old And New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1914\. A last departure from 221B, and the journey back to their new life together.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D. (retired)]_

It was not just our old home that was passing out of our lives never to return, I thought as I looked around the bustling Victoria Station. London, which had been central to so many of our cases and my home for even longer than 221B, also now seemed like another country, one that we might still visit from time to time but to which we did not truly belong. 

We took a slower train that meant we did not have to change at Lewes, and were soon alighting at Berwick. Chuffingden seemed almost preternaturally quiet after the capital, and as we entered I paused at the door of our little cottage to look down at the village beneath us. For some reason I thought back to that 'Eve Of The War' painting in that Southwark studio some ten years back but the skies over us were blue and clear, not black and foreboding.

“Our brave young men are going to be marching off to war, soon”, I said sadly. “Some will never come back and others will return less than whole. The Continent will never be at peace until Germany is defeated.”

He came up behind me, as always a source of warmth and comfort as he stood close. 

“I always admired that part of you, John”, he said softly. “In another age you would have been the knight-crusader, heading off to slay the dragon and rescue the fair damsel in distress.”

I leaned back into him.

“What do I want with fair damsels?” I said lightly. “I have you, remember?”

“And you always will”, he whispered.

Together, we went into our home and onto whatever the future held for us both. Sherlock and John, together for always. It really was... elementary!

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End file.
